'y. 






^ « V ^ ' 









■■i>- 












H. - 






'o. 



vOo., 



^5 --^, 






^ - ^ '^ 









.0- 






•v^' 



0^ 



'S: 



'<r 






5.^- 



v>*: 






'^■"^^'S'% 



'^^S .(. 



" 4' 



.0^ . ' ' ' « ^ <!> ,■■■ » , O- 



.s^ %.. 



&-. 



% 




%: 



.<!-■*'■ 



<3 'i5» -^ 



, O 



< 






' . X -» ,A 



0^ 9>, 



^^ ^. 



< 



I 






cP\, 



% 



^^ 



x^^^. 



"00^ 



"^^ < 



^# 















^^-^ "*^ 



*• o 



*■ ■■''■;^^^^^•-.■'■> 



'\".,^^^»' 

^'^ ^^^ ^ 



^^. 



<^ X 









A 



° ^ ^ >? '^G. 



^\ 






^00 






C^^' 



^/ -' 



^V c ° ^ ^ >P 



-?• ^^ 



c^. 









CP^ * O M 



%/ 

^'^^ "-^ 



'°'^^y/!r'>°:'--";o<-;4/^"""/.<°r^ 






.^^ -^^^ 



^^^^ 









.6^ 






^-^ # 















VVV^-.^^% 






- »■ 



< - , X -^ A 






t-^^ 






^ ^ 
>'^ 



^^ V^^ 






^ ^-. 



V o 



^ 


.^'• 








■"^s^ 


>^ 


% 












« -? 












"o'^ 


^° 







.•^-^ 



^^^ "^^ 






^' /#?/;^^''- 



.5 -^c^. 



i>^'^" 

^^^' ^/>. 






.\^- 






..^* 



\^ 



0' 



,0-^ 



>. A^' 



XEVr \TE^\TOrSTS 
IX .^Jl/Z?v:C\X HISTORY 



^Jt^g^ 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY^ 

ITEW YORK ■ BOSTON • CHICAGO • DALLAS 
ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN & CO.. Limited 

LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

TBE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Lm. 

TORONTO 



NEW VIEWPOINTS 
IN AMERICAN HISTORY 



BY 

ARTHUR MEIER SCHLESINGER 

PROFESSOR OF HISTORY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF IOWA 



A comprehension of the United States of to-day, an 
understanding of the rise and progress of the forces 
which have made it what it is, demands that we should 
rework our history from the new points of view af- 
forded by the present. 

Frederick Jackson Turner: 

Presidential Address 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
1922 

All rights reserved 



PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 



'^'' 

^ 



Copyright, 1922, 
By the MACMILLAN COMPANY. 



Set up and electrotyped. Published, April, 1922. 



AP« -5 ia22 



Press of 

J. J. Little & Ives Company 

New York, U. S. A. 



g)CU659467 





TO 




o. 


s. 


S. 


K. 


B. 


s. 


B. 


S. 




H. 


N. 


, s. 


Sn Mtmoriam 



FOREWORD 

Most adult Americans of today gained their knowledge of 
American history before the present generation of historians 
had made perceptible progress in their epoch-making work 
of reconstructing the story of our past in ihe light of their 
new studies and investigations. Signs of a renaissance of 
American historical writing began to be evident as early as 
the decade of the eighties of the last century. The new 
interest in historical and social phenomena was shown, for 
instance, in the founding of the American Historical Asso- 
ciation, the American Economic Association, the American 
Statistical Association and the American Academy of Po- 
litical and Social Science during that decade, followed shortly 
after by the formation of the American Political Science 
Association, the American Sociological Society and the 
American Society of International Law. American history, 
which had formerly been envisaged as a record of arid po- 
litical and constitutional development, began to be enriched 
by the new conceptions and fresh points of view afforded by 
the scientific study of economics, sociology and politics. 
Influences from abroad also played their part, particularly 
the notable work of John Richard Green, A Short History 
of the English People (1874), with its revisions and enlarge- 
ments. Quickened by these new impulses, historians began 
to view the past of America with broadened vision and to 
attain the power of seeing familiar facts in new relation- 
ships. 

The change did not take place overnight. Historical stu- 
dents in the nineties made important contributions toward 

vii 



viii FOREWORD 

the new history; but it was not until the opening years of 
the present century that the real transformation occurred. 
All historical study and writing since then have been strongly 
colored by the new interests, viewpoints and sympathies. 

Unfortunately, the product of the new school of American 
historians has, in very large part, been buried in the files of 
historical society journals, in the learned publications of the 
universities and in monographs privately printed at the ex- 
pense of the authors. The new history was being written by 
historians for historians rather than for laymen ; and the 
public generally has remained oblivious of the great revolu- 
tion in our knowledge of American history wrought by the 
research specialists. Even the school textbooks have not 
until a comparatively recent time been affected by the djs- 
coveries of the specialists ; and too often the newer type of 
textbook has suffered at the hands of teachers who, though 
familiar with the new facts and emphases as set forth in the 
textbook, have no acquaintance with the general point of 
view which gives to these new facts their tremendous 
significance. 

The object of the present work is to bring together and 
summarize, in non-technical language, some of the results 
of the researches of the present era^of historical study and 
to show their importance to a proper understanding of 
American history. It seems unnecessary to say that the 
interest aroused by the World War in Americanization work 
makes it important that all citizens of the republic should 
learn what the historians have to say about the past of their 
country: Americanization must begin at home. History 
teachers in the public schools may also find in this volume a 
short cut to a rather extensive literature inaccessible to most 
of them. It is the further hope of the author that graduate 
stucfents venturing forth into the field of American history 
for the first time may find this volume useful in suggesting 



FOREWORD ix 

the special interests of the present generation of historians 
and some of the tendencies that seem likely to guide his- 
torical research for some years to come. It has not been my 
primary purpose to celebrate the names of the men and 
women who have cleared the new trails ; but an effort has 
been made in the notes at the end of each chapter to render 
due acknowledgment. 

The title of this volume is, in a sense, a misnomer since 
the viewpoints presented are not new to workers in the his- 
tory field nor are all the new viewpoints set forth. In ex- 
planation of the omissions, the author can only plead his 
feeling that the points of view omitted are not as essential 
as those that have been included or else that the viewpoint 
in question has not yet been sufficiently worked out or defined 
to merit inclusion at this time. In the latter category fall 
two approaches to American history which are certain to 
receive more careful attention in the future, that of religious 
and sectarian influences in American development, and the 
point of view represented by the psychoanalysts. Some of 
the groundwork upon which a religious interpretation of 
American history might be based has already been laid by 
special students of American church history; and the pos- 
sibilities of the psychological approach are suggested, for 
example, by the series of articles on "The American Mind", 
written by Harvey O'Higgins and Edward H. Reede in 
McClure's, vol. 53 (1921), Nos. 3, 4, 6 and 7. It should be 
added that the significant point of view presented by Her- 
bert Eugene Bolton and Thomas Maitland Marshall in their 
book, The Colonization of North America 14^2-1283 (New 
York, 1920), is not treated here for the reason that the 
plan of the present volume embraces only such influences 
and conditions as contributed vitally to the national de- 
velopment of the United States. * 

A work of this kind can hardly hope to be free of error, 



X FOREWORD 

although I believe that no errors have crept in that v^ould 
invalidate the general conclusions reached. Nor can I hope 
that I have been completely successful in eliminating the 
personal equation. Every teacher of history evolves a phi- 
losophy of history which will find expression in spite of all 
efforts at repression; and this is particularly true when the 
subject matter dealt with is controversial in character. Be- 
cause of the scheme of treatment a certain amount of repeti- 
tion in dealing with special incidents and movements has 
been rendered necessary. In putting my material into 
printed form I owe much to the interest and encouragement 
of certain secondary school teachers who heard much of the 
material in lecture form in summer school classes in the Ohio 
State University and the University of Iowa in 191 9 and 
1920. A number of my friends have helpfully read portions 
of the completed manuscript. In particular I am indebted 
to Professor F. W. Coker and Dr. Carl Wittke of the Ohio 
State University. To my wife Elizabeth Bancroft I am obli- 
gated for assistance rendered at every stage of the prepara- 
tion of the manuscript. Chapters I, VII and XI appeared 
originally in somewhat altered form in the American Journal 
of Sociology, the Political Science Quarterly and the His- 
torical Outlook; and for permission to use them again I am 
indebted to the editors of those journals. 

A. M. S. 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Foreword vii 

CHAPTER 

I The Influence of Immigration on Ameri- 
can History i 

II Geographic Factors in American Develop- 
ment 23 

III Economic Influences in American His- 
tory 47 

> IV^ The Decline of Aristocracy in America . 72 

V *■ Radicalism and Conservatism in Ameri- 
can History 103 

VI The Role of Women in American History 126 

VII The American Revolution 160 

VIII Economic Aspects of the Movement for 

the Constitution 184 

IX-*-The Significance of Jacksonian Democ- 
racy 200 

X^ The State Rights Fetish 220 

XI The Foundations of the Modern Era . . 245 

XIIitTHE Riddle of the Parties 266 

Index 289 



NEW VIEWPOINTS 
IN AMERICAN HISTORY 



i%c ' '^"i 






NEW VIEWPOINTS IN 
AMERICAN HISTORY 

CHAPTER I 

THE INFLUENCE OF IMMIGRATION ON AMERICAN HISTORY 

The New World was discovered by a man who was 
trying his utmost to find an older world than the one from 
which he had sailed. If Columbus had known that he had 
failed to reach the fabled Orient, he would have died a 
bitterly disillusioned man. Yet, in the judgment of his- 
tory, the measure of his greatness is to be found in the fact 
that he committed this cardinal blunder, for thereby he and 
the later explorers opened up to the crowded populations of 
Europe a means of escape from poverty and oppression 
for many centuries to come. The ratio between man and 
land became changed for the whole civilized world, and 
there opened up before humanity unsuspected opportunities 
for development and progress. On account of political dis- 
turbances in Europe and the difficulties of ocean travel, the 
full possibilities of this epochal change were only gradually 
developed; and the effects were thus distributed through 
the last four centuries of world-history. But the event itself 
stands forth as one of the tremendous facts of history. So 
far as the human mind can foresee, nothing of a similar 
nature can ever happen again. 

The great Volkerwanderungen, set in motion by the 



2 NEW VIEWPOINTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

opening up of the Western Hemisphere, have been essen- 
tially unlike any earlier migrations in history, and in com- 
parison with them most of the earlier movements of popula- 
tion were numerically insignificant. In a large sense, all 
American history has been the product of these migratory 
movements from the Old World. Since the red-skinned 
savage has never been a potent factor in American develop- 
ment, the whole history of the United States and, to a lesser 
degree, of the two Americas is, at bottom, the story of the 
successive waves of immigration and of the adaptation of 
the newcomers and their descendants to the new surround- 
ings offered by the Western Hemisphere. Thus the two 
grand themes of American history are, properly, the influ- 
ence of immigration upon American life and institutions, 
and the influence of the American environment, especially 
the frontier in the early days and the industrial integration 
of more recent times, upon the ever-changing composite 
population. 



Columbus's first voyage of discovery was a strange fore- 
shadowing of the later history of the American people, for, 
in a very real sense, his voyage may be considered an inter- 
national enterprise. Acting under the authority of Spain, 
this Italian sailed with a crew consisting of Spaniards, one 
Irishman, an Englishman, and an Israelite. These national- 
ities were later to enter fully into the rich heritage which this 
voyage made possible to the world. In the next two centuries 
the nations of Europe, large and small, sought to stake out 
colonial claims in America, not with entire success from 
an imperialistic point of view, but with the result that 
cultural foundations were laid whose influence may still be 
traced in the legal systems, customs, and institutions of 
many parts of the United States today. A familiar illus- 



THE INFLUENCE OF IMMIGRATION 3 

tration is afforded in the case of Louisiana, where the con- 
tinental civil law, instead of the English common law, 
governs domestic relations and transfers of property as a 
reminder of the days when the French and the Spanish 
owned the land. 

Contrary to a widespread belief, even the people of the 
thirteen English colonies were a mixture of ethnic breeds. 
Indeed, these colonies formed the most cosmopolitan area 
in the world at the time. This was due, in part, to the 
English conquest of colonies planted by rival European 
powers along the Atlantic Coast, but was the result more 
largely of abundant immigration from various parts of the 
world after the original settlements had been well estab- 
lished. A Colonial Dame or a Daughter of the American 
Revolution might conceivably have nothing but pure 
Hebrew blood or French or German blood in her veins. 
During the first century of English colonization, the seven- 
teenth, the English race was the main contributor to the 
population, the Dutch and French Huguenot contributions 
being less important. These racial elements occupied the 
choice lands near the coast, and thus compelled the stream 
of immigration of the eighteenth century to pour into the 
interior, a significant development in view of the different 
character and great numbers of these later settlers. 

While the religious motive has properly been stressed in 
the history of colonization, it should not be overlooked that 
the economic urge, operating independently or as a stiffening 
to religious conviction, sent countless thousands fleeing to 
American shores. We need not wink at the fact that the 
immigrants of colonial times were actuated by the same 
motives as the immigrants today, namely a determination to 
escape religious or political oppression and a desire to im- 
prove their living conditions. To make this generalization 
strictly applicable to immigration in our own day, one might 



.} 



4 NEW VIEWPOINTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

wish to reverse the order of emphasis, although the Russian 
Jews and the Armenian refugees are conspicuous examples 
of the contrary. 

The earliest English settlement, that at Jamestown, was 
sent out by an English trading corporation which was inter- 
ested primarily in making profits for the stockholders of the 
company out of the industry of the settlers. In a like spirit, 
that canny Quaker William Penn lost no opportunity, after 
the first settlements were made in his dominion of Pennsyl- 
vania, to stimulate immigration artificially, for the result- 
ing enhancement of real estate values meant an increased 
income for him. He advertised his lands widely through- 
out Europe, offering large tracts at nominal prices and 
portraying the political and religious advantages of resi- 
dence under his rule. In anticipation of later practices, he 
maintained paid agents in the Rhine Valley, who were so 
successful that within a score of years German immigrants 
numbered almost one-half of the population. 

Another source of "assisted immigration" was to be 
found in the practice of European nations to drain their 
almshouses and jails into their colonies ; it has been esti- 
mated that as many as fifty thousand criminals were sent to 
the thirteen colonies by Great Britain. Due allowance must, 
of course, be made for a legal code which condemned 
offenders to death for stealing a joint of meat worth more 
than one shilling! Perhaps one-half of all the white immi- 
grants during the larger part of the colonial period were 
unable to pay their expenses. They came "indentured" and 
were auctioned off for a period of service by the ship cap- 
tains in payment for their transportation. Still another 
element of the population, perhaps one-fifth of the whole in 
the eighteenth century, consisted of Guinea negroes who 
became emigrants to the New World only through the 
exercise of superior force. A well-known historian is 



THE INFLUENCE OF IMMIGRATION 5 

authority for the statement that probably one-third of the 
colonists in 1760 were born outside of America. 

Men of older colonial stock viewed the more recent comers 
with a species of alarm that was to be repeated with each 
new generation of the American breed. Benjamin Franklin 
declared that the German immigrants pouring into Penn- 
sylvania *'are generally the most stupid of their own nation. 
. . . Not being used to liberty they know not how to 
make modest use of it." They appear at elections "in droves 
and carry all before them, except in one or two counties. 
Few of their children know English." At one time a bill 
was passed by the colonial legislature of Pennsylvania to 
restrict the immigration of the German Palatines, but it was 
vetoed by the governor. The familiar objections to immi- 
gration on grounds of non-assimilability, pauperism, and 
criminality originated during these early days, leaving for 
later and more congested times the development of argu- 
ments derived from the fear of economic competition. 

The preponderance of English settlers in the first century 
of colonization served to fix governmental institutions and 
political ideals in an English mold and to make English 
speech the general language 'of the colonists. In the later 
colonial period most of New England retained its purely 
English character because of the Puritan policy of religious 
exclusiveness ; but into the other colonies alien racial ele- 
ments came in great numbers and left their impress on 
native culture and, in a less measure, on American speech. 
It is instructive to remember that the great English Puritan 
migration did not exceed twenty thousand, whereas more 
than one hundred and fifty thousand Scotch-Irish Presby- 
terians settled in the colonies in the eighteenth century.^ 

* These were lowland Scots who had been transplanted to Ulster early in the 
seventeenth century. Suffering from religious and political disabilities and 
afflicted with hard times, these Ulstermen sought relief through migration to 
the colonies. 



6 NEW VIEWPOINTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

Unlike the Puritans, the Scotch-Irish were to be found in 
nearly five hundred settlements scattered through all the 
colonies on the eve of the Revolution; and being every- 
where animated with a fierce passion for liberty, they served 
as an amalgam to bind together all other racial elements 
in the population. The Germans, who numbered over 
200,000 in 1776, were to be found chiefly in western New 
York, and particularly in the western counties of Pennsyl- 
vania, where they gave rise to the breed which we call the 
Pennsylvania Dutch. A recent student of the subject esti- 
mates that, at the outbreak of the War for Independence, 
about one-tenth of the total population was German and 
perhaps one-sixth Scotch-Irish. 

Since the best sites near the coast were |Trp-en;]ptpd . the 
Scotch-Irish and the Germans for the most part pushed 
into the valleys of the interior where they occupied fertile 
farm lands and acted as a buffer against Indian forays on 
the older settlements. Combining with the native whites 
in the back country, they quickly developed a group con- 
sciousness due to the organized efforts of the English- 
American minorities of the seaboard to minimize the influ- 
ence of the frontier population in the colonial legislature 
and courts ; and in the case of the abortive Regulator uprising 
in North Carolina, they invoked civil war to secure a redress 
of grievances. Eventually their struggle proved to be the 
decisive factor in establishing the two American principles 
of equality before the law and of representation upon the 
basis of numbers. When the disruption with Great Britain 
approached, the non-English strains of the back country 
lent great propulsive force to the movement for independ- 
ence and republican government. They were probably the 
deciding factors in Pennsylvania and South Carolina, where 
the ties of loyalty binding the colonists were especially 
strong. 



THE INFLUENCE OF IMMIGRATION 7 

Other racial strains made a deep impress upon the history 
of the times. Someone has pointed out that eight of the 
men most prominent in the early history of New York 
represented eight non-English nationalities: Schuyler, of 
Dutch descent; Herkimer, whose parents were pure-blooded 
Germans from the Rhine Palatinate ; John Jay, of French 
stock; Livingston, Scotch; Clinton, Irish; Morris, Welsh; 
Baron Steuben, Prussian; and Hoffman, Swedish. Of the 
fifty-six signers of the Declaration of Independence, eighteen 
were of non-English stock and, of these, eight were born 
outside of the colonies. Joseph Galloway, the Pennsylvania 
loyalist, declared before a committee of the House of Com- 
mons in 1779 that in the patriot army "there were scarcely 
one-fourth natives of America — about one-half Irish, the 
other fourth were English and Scotch." This statement 
fails to do justice to the other foreign-born soldiers who 
fought in the War for Independence. 

II 

Throughout the period of national independence, immi- 
gration continued to exert a profound influence on the 
development of American institutions, political ideals, and j 
industrial life. Within ten years of the adoption of the -^ 
Constitution, immigration received unwelcome recognition 
as wielding a democratizing influence on American life. 
The Federalist party, dominated by aristocratic sympathies, 
was determined to deal a death blow to the heresy known 
variously as "mobocracy" or "democracy" ; and so it passed 
the Alien and Sedition Acts and the Naturalization Law in 
1798 for the purpose of preventing aliens from cultivating 
this dangerous doctrine in the United States. The party 
did not survive this legislation ; but its hatred of the foreigner 
in America continued to burn unabated. The Hartford Con- 
vention of 1 814, voicing the old Federalist spirit, ascribed 



8 NEW VIEWPOINTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

the fallen state of the country partly to the fact that mal- 
contents from Europe were permitted to hold office, and 
demanded that the Constitution be amended to disqualify 
immigrants, even though naturalized, from holding federal 
position. Yet, during this period, two of the foremost 
statesmen of the nation were foreigners by birth: Alex- 
ander Hamilton, Washington's great Secretary of the 
Treasury, a native of the West Indies ; and Albert Gallatin, 
Jefferson's great Secretary of the Treasury, a Swiss by 
birth. It is difficult to see how the young republic could 
have been guided safely through the financial perils of these 
first critical years of independence without the genius of 
these two men. 

Beginning with the year 1820 the numbers of foreigners 
migrating into the United States each decade mounted 
rapidly, passing the half -million mark during the thirties 
and rising above the two and a half million mark in the 
decade of the fifties. The racial strains represented in this 
migration were essentially the same as during colonial times, 
the Teutonic and the Celtic. The high-water mark in the 
period before the Civil War was reached when the tide of 
immigration brought to American shores, in the late forties 
and early fifties, great numbers of German liberals who 
had fled Germany because of the failure of the Revolution 
of 1848, and huge numbers of famine-stricken peasants from 
central and southern Ireland. ; More than half a million 
Germans sought America between 1830 and 1850, and nearly 
a million more came in the next decade. The larger portion 
of these went into the Middle West. They became pioneers 
in the newer parts of Ohio and in Cincinnati ; they took up 
the hardwood lands- of the Wisconsin counties along Lake 
Michigan ; they went in large numbers to Michigan, Illinois, 
Indiana, Missouri and the river towns of Iowa. This 
German influx contained an exceptionally large proportion 



THE INFLUENCE OF IMMIGRATION 9 

of educated and forceful leaders, men and women who 
contributed powerfully to the spiritual and educational 
development of the communities in which they settled and 
whose liberal social customs were at interesting variance 
with the inherited Puritan austerity of the settlers of New 
England extraction. Virtually all the western states per- 
ceived the advantages of immigration as an agency for 
developing their resources; and emulating the example of 
William Penn they were not backward in appropriating 
money and establishing agents in Europe to furnish pro- 
spective emigrants with all possible information as to the 
soil, climate, and general conditions of the country. Colonies 
of European peasants began to be established in many parts 
of the West — at one time it appeared that Wisconsin might 
become exclusively a German state. 

The Irish immigrants, on the other hand, sought the 
Eastern cities or else went forth into the construction camps. 
These were the years during which roads, canals, and public 
works were being constructed upon an extensive scale and 
the first railroads were being projected. The hard manual 
labor for these enterprises was performed mainly by the 
Irish. The congestion of the Irish in the eastern cities led 
to many evils, none more startling than the increases in 
pauperism, intemperance and illiteracy. In 1838 it was 
estimated that more than one-half of the paupers in the 
country were of foreign birth. A committee of the city of 
Boston reported in 1849 o^ the *Svr etched, dirty and un- 
healthy condition of a great number of the dwelling houses 
occupied by the Irish population," showing that each room 
from cellar to garret was likely to contain one or more 
families. Such conditions gave great impetus to the numer- 
ous movements for humanitarian reform which characterized 
the thirties and forties. Better housing conditions, a more 
humane legal code, prohibition, better schools, labor reform — 



lo NEW VIEWPOINTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

all these demands received increased emphasis because of the 
social conditions under which the immigrants, and particu- 
larly the Irish, lived in the Eastern cities. 

As a result of the heavy immigration of the forties and 
fifties, political corruption became an important factor in 
American politics for the first time. The newly arrived 
foreigner fell an easy prey to the unscrupulous native poli- 
tician in the cities; and fraudulent naturalization papers, 
vote buying, and similar practices became so notorious that 
a probe committee of Congress declared in i860: "It is 
well known to the American people that stupendous frauds 
have been perpetrated in the election of 1856, in Pennsyl- 
vania, by means of forged and fictitious naturalization 
papers." President Buchanan wrote that "we never heard 
until within a recent period of the employment of money to 
carry elections." Much of the immigrant labor came in 
under contract to private corporations, and the decade of 
the fifties saw the first effective employment of arguments 
against immigration based upon the plea that the lower 
standard of living of the foreigners made it impossible for 
native laborers to compete with them. 

The jealousy and ill feeling engendered by the above 
causes were increased by religious differences. The Irish 
were mostly Catholics ; and it was not long before Catholic 
churches began to rise throughout southern New England 
and the Middle Atlantic States, and convents and parochial 
schools competed with the public schools, which were coming 
to be looked upon as the true basis of democracy. The 
outcome was the growth of a powerful movement against 
immigration, which is without parallel in American history. 
Calling themselves Native Americans, political parties were 
formed in New York and other eastern cities to prevent the 
election of foreign-born citizens to of^ce ; and ten years later, 
in 1845, 3- national organization was effected with more 



THE INFLUENCE OF IMMIGRATION ii 

than one hundred thousand members. In 1850 the move- 
ment assumed the guise of a secret organization under the 
name, known only to the initiate, of The Supreme Order 
of the Star-Spangled Banner. Outsiders lost no time in 
dubbing the members "Know Nothings," since the rank and 
file, when asked regarding the mysteries of the order, in- 
variably replied: "We know nothing." Due perhaps to the 
disturbed state of politics in the fall of 1854 and the hesi- 
tancy of many citizens to take a definite stand on the slavery 
question as reopened by the Kansas-Nebraska Act, the party 
enjoyed phenomenal success, carrying six states and failing 
in seven others only by a narrow margin. But two years 
later, with a presidential ticket in the field, the party showed 
little strength, having succumbed to the growing popular 
absorption in the slavery controversy. Several attempts 
were made after the Civil War by secret societies and minor 
parties to revive nativist feeling but with a notable lack of 
success, although, as we shall see presently, non-partisan 
political agitation during the same period has resulted in the 
passage of certain restrictive measures by the federal govern- 
ment. 

In the period prior to the Civil War the stream of immi- 
gration had been turned from the South by the Mason and 
Dixon line, for the free laborers of Europe could not profit- 
ably compete with the slave laborers of the South. Nearly 
all the immigrant guidebooks published before the Civil 
War warned Europeans against the presence of slavery and 
the strongly intrenched caste system in that section. This 
avoidance had serious results for the South, as some 
economists of that section foresaw, for it practically pre- 
cluded that diversification of industry which a plentiful 
supply of cheap white labor would have rendered possible. 
Thus the economic system of the South came to rest more 
and more exclusively upon a single prop, and the control 



12 NEW VIEWPOINTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

of southern policy fell into the ambitious hands of the 
cotton planters. Furthermore, the native southern stock, 
left to itself, interbred, and the mass of the whites were 
deprived of the liberalizing influences of contact with persons 
and ideas from other parts of the world. The first federal 
law restricting immigration was passed during this period 
when the act of 1807 forbade the future introduction of 
negro slaves; but this law came too late to avert the evil 
consequences flowing from the earlier unrestricted importa- 
tion of blacks. 

Meanwhile, the European peasants and workingmen, 
predisposed against slavery by temperament and economic 
interest, had massed themselves in the North and helped to 
stiffen the sentiment of that section against an institution 
that was an anachronism in Europe. It is but a slight 
indication of the attitude of the German Americans to note 
that, when additional federal territory was opened to pos- 
sible slave settlement by the Kansas-Nebraska Act, eighty 
German newspapers out of eighty-eight were decidedly 
opposed to the measure. Who can estimate of what vital 
consequence it was to the future of a united country that, 
in the eventful decade prior to the outbreak of the Civil 
War, the foreign population of the United States increased 
eighty-four per cent? It was William H. Seward, cam- 
paigning in Missouri in i860 for the election of Lincoln, 
who congratulated the state upon its "onward striving, 
freedom loving German inhabitants" and declared that 
"Missouri must be Germanized in order to be free." In 
the actual fighting, foreign-born soldiers played a notable 
part, although many of them had fled Europe to escape com- 
pulsory military service. It is perhaps generally known that 
the militia companies formed among the Germans in Mis- 
souri, especially in St. Louis, were pivotal in saving that 
state for the Union in the early months of the war; but it 



y 



THE INFLUENCE OF IMMIGRATION 13 

is not so well known that both the Germans and the Irish 
furnished more troops to the federal armies in proportion 
to their numbers than did the native-born northerners. 

Ill 

, Immigration entered a new phase in the years following 
the Civil War. Prior to this time the immigrants had been 
of racial strains very closely related to the original settlers 
of the country. Indeed, from one point of view, the 
American people in the ante helium period were merely a 
making-over, in a new environment, of the old English race 
out of the same elements which had entered into its compo- 
sition from the beginning in England. But with the great 
industrial expansion in America after the war and the 
opening of many steamship lines between the Mediterranean 
ports and the United States, new streams of immigration 
began to set in from Southern and Eastern Europe; and 
this new invasion with its lower standards of living caused 
a reduction in the old Teutonic and Celtic immigration from 
Western Europe. The change began to be apparent about 
1885, but it was not until 1896 that the three currents from 
Austria-Hungary, Italy, and Russia exceeded in volume the 
contributions of the United Kingdom, Germany, and Scan- 
dinavia. 

On the Pacific Coast a new situation also arose, due to 
the first coming of thousands of Chinese laborers in the 
fifties and sixties. California became transformed into a 
battleground for a determination of the issue whether the 
immigrant from the Orient or from the Occident should 
perform the manual work of the Pacific Coast. In this con- 
nection it is suggestive that the notorious Dennis Kearney, 
arch-agitator of the Sand Lots against the Chinese immi- 
grant, was himself a native of the County Cork. / The vic- 
tory ultimately fell to the European immigrant and his 



14 NEW VIEWPOINTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

American offspring in this conflict as well as in the later and 
more familiar one with the Japanese immigrant ; and by one 
means or another the yellow race has been excluded from 
further entrance into the United States. The considered 
judgment of Americans of European origin seems to be 
that no Asiatic strain shall enter into the composite American 
stock or make its first-hand contribution to American culture. 

Far more important than this problem has been the effect 
of the latter-day influx from Europe upon American devel- 
opment and ideals. Since 1870 twenty-five million Euro- 
peans have come to the United States as compared with pos- 
sibly one-third of that number in the entire earlier period 
of independent national existence. Professor Ripley pointed 
out in the Atlantic Monthly in 1908 that the newcomers of 
the period since 1900 would, if properly distributed over the 
newer parts of the country, serve to populate no less than 
nineteen states of the Union. These immigrants have con- 
tributed powerfully to the rapid exploitation of the country's 
natural resources and to the establishment of modern indus- 
trialism in America. The German and Scandinavian ele- 
ments among the immigrants continued to seek the land, and 
were rushed out to the prairies by immigrant trains to fill 
the remaining spaces in the older states of the Middle West. 
But the majority of the latter-day immigrants avoided agri- 
culture and bore the brunt of the manual labor of building 
the railroads as well as of most of the unskilled work in 
the mines and the great basic industries of the country. 

A characteristic of the more recent immigration has been 
the fact that approximately one-third of the newcomers have 
returned to their places of origin. This has created a rest- 
less, migratory, "bird of passage" class of laborers, lacking 
every interest in the permanent advance of the American 
working class and always competing on a single-standard 
basis. The swarming of foreigners into the great industries 



THE INFLUENCE OF IMMIGRATION 15 

occurred at considerable cost to the native workingmen, for 
the latter struggled in vain for higher wages or better con- 
ditions as long as the employers could command the services 
of an inexhaustible supply of foreign laborers. Thus, the 
new immigration has made it easier for the few to amass 
enormous fortunes at the expense of the many and has 
helped to create in this country for the first time yawning 
inequalities of wealth. 

Most sociologists believe that the addition of hordes of 
foreigners to the population of the United States has caused 
a decline in the birth-rate of the old American stock, for 
the native laborer has been forced to avoid large families 
in order to be in a position to meet the growing severity 
of the economic competition forced upon him by the immi- 
grant. This condition, coupled with the tendency of immi- 
grant laborers to crowd the native Americans farther and 
farther from the industrial centers of the. country, has 
caused the great communities and commonwealths of the 
Atlantic seaboard, about whose names cluster the heroic 
traditions of revolutionary times, to change completely their 
original characters. According to the census of 1910, Pur- 
itan New England is today the home of a population of 
whom two-thirds were born in foreign lands or else had 
parents who were. Boston is as cosmopolitan a city as 
Chicago; and Faneuil Hall is an anachronism, a curiosity 
of bygone days left stranded on the shores of the Italian 
quarter. In fifteen of the largest cities of the United States 
the foreign immigrants and their children outnumber the 
native whites; and by the same token alien racial elements 
are in the majority in thirteen of the states of the Union. 
When President Wilson was at the Peace Conference, he 
reminded the Italian delegates that there were more of their 
countrymen in New York than in any Italian city; and it 
is not beside the point to add here that New York is also 



i6 NEW VIEWPOINTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

the greatest Irish city in the world and the largest Jewish 
city. 

Whatever of history may be made in the future in these 
parts of the country will not be the result primarily of an 
"Anglo-Saxon" heritage but will be the product of the 
interaction of these more recent racial elements upon each 
other and their joint reaction to the American scene. Unless 
the unanticipated should intervene, the stewardship of 
American ideals and culture is destined to pass to a new 
composite American type now in the process of making. 

Politically the immigration of the last half -century has 
borne good fruit as well as evil. The intelligent thoughtful 
immigrant lacked the inherited prejudices of the native voter 
and was less likely to respond to ancient catchwords or be 
stirred by the revival of Civil War issues. The practice of 
''waving the bloody shirt" was abandoned by the politicians 
largely because of' the growing strength of the naturalized 
voters, of which group Carl Schurz was, of course, the 
archtype. In place of this practice arose a new one, equally 
as reprehensible, by which the major parties used their 
political patronage and their platform promises to angle for 
the support of naturalized groups among the voters. iNo 
racial group has been as assiduously courted by the poli- 
ticians as the Irish; and it was early discovered that the 
easiest way to gain Irish favor was to feed their hatred of 
England. "Twisting the lion's tail" became a recognized 
and successful political device, as, for instance, Alexander 
Mackay observed in his travels in the United States as early 
as 1 846- 1 847; and incidentally much of the long-standing 
resentment of Americans against Great Britain may be 
ascribed to the uncalculated effect of this practice upon the 
public generally. In 1884 James G. Blaine, the Republican 
candidate for president, had good reason to believe that he 
would win the Irish vote when an indiscreet supporter lost 



THE INFLUENCE OF IMMIGRATION 17 

the election for him by prominently identifying his name 
with opposition to "Rum, Romanism and Rebellion." In 
the next two presidential elections both parties found it 
expedient to insert in their platforms forthright declara- 
tions in favor of home rule for Ireland ! 

Generally speaking, racial influences have been most 
strongly felt in state and local politics although national 
parties have found it necessary to print their campaign liter- 
ature in as many as sixteen different languages. The so- 
called "hyphenated American" has become a familiar figure 
in the last few years merely because the World War has 
made natiye-born citizens take serious cognizance of the 
polyglot political situation; and the activity of the German- 
American Alliance in the campaign of 191 6 is an illustration 
of how dangerous to the national welfare the meddling of 
racial groups among the voters may become. , 

To the immigrant must also be assigned the responsibility 
for the accelerated growth of political and industrial radical- 
ism in this country.; While most of the newcomers quietly, 
accepted their humble place in American society, a minority 
of the immigrants consisted of political refugees and other 
extremists, embittered by their experiences in European 
countries and suspicious of constituted authority under 
whatever guise. These men represented the Left Wing in 
their revolt against political authority in Europe just as three 
centuries earlier the Pilgrims comprised the Left Wing in 
their struggle against ecclesiastical authority. 

Since radicalism is a cloak covering a multitude of dissents 
and affirmations, the influence of these men may be traced 
in a wide variety of programs of social reconstruction and 
movements for humanitarian reform. The first Socialist 
parties in the United States were organized by German 
Americans in the years following the Civil War; and 
political Socialism, in its type of organization, terminology, 



i8 NEW VIEWPOINTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

and methods of discipline, can hardly yet be said to be 
fully acclimated to the New World. Violence and anarchism 
were first introduced into the American labor movement in 
the eighties by Johann Most and his associates, the greater 
number of whom, like Most^Jiimself, were, of aUen birth; 
and the contemporaneous I.W.W. movement finds its chief 
strength in the support of the migratory foreign-born 
laborer. Even the Non-partisan League may not be hailed, 
though some would so have it, as a product of an indigenous 
American Socialism, for this organization originated and has 
enjoyed its most spectacular successes in a western common- 
, wealth in which 70 per cent of the people were natives of 
sJ Europe or are the children of foreign-born parents. 

The new immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe, 
with its lower standard of living and characteristic racial 
differences, has intensified many existing social problems and 
created a number of new ones, particularly in the centers 
of population. The modern programs for organized and 
scientific philanthropy had their origin very largely in the 
effort to cure these spreading social sores. Out of this 
situation has also grown a new anti-immigration or nativist 
movement, unrelated to similar movements of earlier times 
and indeed regarding with approval the very racial groups 
against which the earlier agitation had been directed. This 
new movement has functioned most effectively through non- 
partisan channels, particularly through that of organized 
l^bor, and has commanded strong support in both parties. 
Whereas immigrants had virtually all been admitted without 
let or hindrance down to 1875, a number of laws have been 
passed since then with the primary purpose of removing the 
worst evils of indiscriminate immigration, the severest 
restriction being the literacy test affixed in 1917.^ This con- 
temporary nativism cannot justify its existence by reason 

^ In 1 92 1 a law was passed, professedly to meet a temporary situation, re- 
stricting the annual immigration from any country to three per cent of the 
number of aliens of that country in the United States in 1910. 



THE INFLUENCE OF IMMIGRATION 19 

of the large proportion of aliens as compared with the native 
population, for, as Professor Max Farrand has recently 
shown, immigration was on a proportionately larger scale 
in colonial times than during the last fifty years. It owes 
its being, doubtless, to the tendency of the latter-day immi- 
grants to settle in portions of the country that are already 
thickly populated and to the fact that the Americans of older 
stock can no longer find relief from industrial competition 
by taking up government land in the West. 

IV 

/ 

(No modern people is compounded of such heterogeneous 

ingredients as the American. That American manners and 
culture owe much to this admixture there can be little doubt 
though such influences are pervasive and intangible and 
their value not easy to assess. Of the older racial strains, 
the ijTe2£essible__goodjiun^^ and executive-^ualiti^s-el-the- 
Irish, the sQlidity_and jhoroughness of the German, the 
tenacity and highmin dedness of the S^cotch-Irish, the law::, 
abiding qualities of th e English , and the sobriety and industry 
ot tiie S candinavian have undoubtedly made important con- 
tributions to our national character. 

The fine arts in America have been developed largely by 
men of mixed blood. One critic (Mencken) would even 
have us believe that the "low caste Anglo-Saxons" who 
formed the vast proportion of the English migration to 
America were incapable of producing original ideas, thus 
leaving intellectual experimentation necessarily to immi- 
grants of different antecedents. Although this assertion is 
an exaggeration, Mencken is able to marshal an imposing 
array of novelists, artists and poets in support of his con- 
tention — Walt Whitman who was half Dutch, James with an 
Irish grandfather, Poe who was partly German, Howells 
who was largely German and Irish, etc. 

Foreign cultural influences, which in any case would 



20 NEW VIEWPOINTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

have been reflected in the artistic strivings of a new country 
like America, were reinvigorated by the presence in our 
population of the representatives of many different foreign 
nationalities. As Mencken again points out, our music is 
almost wholly German or Italigjn ; our ^inting is French ; 
our literature may be anything from English to Russian^; our 
architecture is likely to be a phantasmagoria of borrow- 
ings. The American e ducatiojial system from kindergarten 
to university has been patterned upon German, models . 
"Even so elemental an art as that of cookery shows no native 
development" for "any decent restaurant that one blunders 
upon in the land is likely to be French, and if not French, 
then Italian or German or Chinese." 

It is not fantastic to believe that, during three centuries 
of history, the immigrant elements in our population have 
not only profoundly i nfluenced the^_ailturaL, institulJQiialr 
and material development of the United—States, but have 
also been largely r£S2onsible for distilling that precious 
pyssenre which we call Ame r ican idealisrq . The bold man 
falters when asked to define Arnerirpn idealistp . but four 
of its affirmative attributes are assuredly a dsep— abiding; 
iai^ in the commn^ n ''^;ni the right of egu ality^ of oppor- 
t unity,^ to leratio n of all creeds and op i nions , and a high 
regard for the rights of weak er nations. The great mass of 
immigrants came to the New World to attest their devotion 
to one or all of these ideals — they came as protestants against 
tyranny, injustice, intolerance, militarism, as well as against 
economic oppression. Nor is more concrete evidence lacking 
to show that neither they nor their sons rested until these 
great principles were firmly woven into the fabric of Amer- 
ican thought and political practice. 

During the last five years the United Spat es has risen ,to 
a position of world leade rship in a sense never realj ^gd by 
any other country in history. Sober reflection convinces 



THE INFLUENCE OF IMMIGRATION 21 

one that this was not an accident due to one man's person- 
ahty: it grew out of the inevitable logic of a situation which 
found the United States an amalgam of all the peoples at 
war. Although the old stocks continued belligerent and 
apart in Europe, the warring nations instinctively turned 
for leadership to that western land where the same racial 
breeds met and mingled and dwelt in harmony with each 
other. Observers in Europe during the war testified to the 
willingness with which all classes of people in the various 
countries were ready to hearken to and follow the country 
whose liberal spirit they knew from the letters of their 
friends in America or from their own experiences there. 
In the great world-drama President Wilson played a pre- 
destined part; by reason of his position as spokesman of 
the American people he was the historic embodiment of the 
many national traditions inherent in a nation formed of 
^any nations. This would seem to foreshadow the role 
,^hich, for good or ill, the United States is fated to play in 
the future. Those who, in the discussions over the League 
of Nations, have advocated that the United States should 
occupy a position of isolation and irresponsibility have failed 
to grasp this great fundamental truth. 



BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 

There is a vast literature on immigration in the form of books, 
magazine articles and reports of the federal and state governments. 
Practically all these writers have studied immigration as a social 
problem and have given little or no attention to immigration as a 
dynamic factor in American development. Readers interested in 
the latter phase may, however, find relevant material in the follow- 
ing works: Henry Pratt Fairchild's Immigration (New York, 
1917), chaps, ii-vi ; Max Farrand's "Immigration in the Light of 
History" in the New Republic, December 2, 9, 16, 23, 1916; Frank 
Julian Warne's The Tide of Immigration (New York, 1916), chaps, 
xii, XX ; and Samuel P. Orth's Our Foreigners (in the Chronicles 
of America Series, vol. 35; New Haven, 1920). Scattered through 
the eight volumes of John Bach McMaster's History of the People 



22 NEW VIEWPOINTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

of the United States (New York, 1883-1913) may be found many 
references to immigration from 1783 to the Civil War. 

Notwithstanding these fragmentary discussions, this vital approach 
to an understanding of American history has been neglected by the 
historians generally. No field is more fruitful and many years of 
devoted research will be required to exploit fully its possibilities. _ 

There is a valuable and growing literature dealing historically with 
separate racial elements in the United States. Many of these works 
have to be used with caution because of the temptation of the 
author to give undue importance to the nationality with which he 
is dealing. Of these works some of the more valuable are: 
Rasmus B. Anderson's The First Chapter of^ Norwegian Immigra- 
tion (1821-1840) (Madison, 1896) ; Kendric C. Babcock's The 
Scandinavian Element in the United States (Urbana, 1914) ; Emily 
Greene Balch's Our Slavic Fellow Citizens (New York, 1910) ; 
Charles S. Bernheimer's The Russian Jezv in America (Philadelphia, 
1905) ; Ernest Bruncken's German Political Refugees in the United 
States during the Period from 18 15-1860 (Chicago, 1904) ; Thomas 
Burgess's Greeks in America (Boston, 1913) ; Thomas Capek's The 
Czechs in America (Boston, 1920) ; Mary Roberts Coolidge's 
Chinese Immigration (New York, 1909) ; J. G. Craighead's Scotch 
and Irish Seeds in American Soil (Philadelphia, 1879) ; Henry Pratt 
Fairchild's Greek Immigration to the United States (New Haven, 
191 1) ; Albert B. Faust's The German Element in the United States 
(2 V. ; Boston, 1909) ; George T. Flom's A History of Norwegian 
Immigration to the United States {lo-w 3. C'liy, 1909); Henry Jones 
Ford's The Scotch-Irish in America (Princeton, 1915) ; Charles A. 
Hanna's The Scotch-Irish (2 v.; New York, 1902); George Ford 
Huizinga's What the Dutch Have Done in the West of the United 
States (Philadelphia, 1909) ; Amandus Johnson's The Swedes in 
America, 1638-1900 (Philadelphia, 1914) ;. Stanley C. Johnson's A 
History of Emigration from the United Kingdom to North America 
1763-1912 (London, 1913) ; Eliot Lord, J, J. D. Trenor and Samuel 
J. Barrows's The Italian^ in America (New York, 1905) ; John 
Francis Maguire's The Irish in America (London, 1868) ; Thomas 
D'Arcy McGee's A History of the Irish Settlers in North Americai 
(Boston, 1850) ; H. A. Millis's The Japanese Problem in the United 
States (New York, 1915) ; O. N. Nelson's History of the Scandi- 
navians 'and Successful Scandinavians in the United States (2 v.; 
Minneapolis, 1904) ; Madison C. Peters's The Jezvs in America 
(Philadelphia, 1905) ; Ruth Putnam's "The Dutch Element in the 
United States" in the Annual Report of the American Historical 
Association for 1909, pp. 205-218; Peter Ross's The Scot in America 
(New York, 1896) ; Benjamin Brawley's A Social History of the 
American Negro (New York, 1921). 

A suggestive biographical approach to the historical influence of 
immigration is Joseph Husb ajod's Americans by Adoption (Boston, 
1920), a volume~in which the lives of nine eminent Americans of 
foreign birth are dealt with, among them Agassiz, Schurz, Carnegie, 
St. Gaudens and Jacob A. Riis. 



CHAPTER II 

GEOGRAPHIC FACTORS IN AMERICAN DEVELOPMENT 

**Man can no more be scientifically studied apart from 
the ground which he tills, or the lands over which he travels, 
or the sea over which he trades, than polar bear or desert 
cactus can be understood apart from its habitat. . . . 
Man has been so noisy about the way he has 'conquered 
Nature,' and Nature has been so silent in her persistent 
influence over man, that the geographic factor in the equa- 
tion of human development has been overlooked." That 
the geographic factor has played an important part in shap- 
ing the history of the American people no thoughtful person 
can deny. The conformation of the Atlantic coast, the 
mountains and plains and virgin forests of the interior, the 
frequency of water courses and the variations of climate 
and soil have all left their impress upon the manner and 
quality of American development. In a strict sense of the 
term, geographic influences are to be regarded as those 
influences exerted on man by the exterior physical features 
of the earth; but, for all practical purposes, variations in 
temperature and moisture may be included as a part of the 
physical conditions because of the close connection between 
physiography and climate. 

In American history two features of the geographic sit- 
uation have been of commanding importance: the sheer 
distance of the New World from the Old; and the physio- 
graphical peculiarities of the North American continent. 
Although, of course, these two aspects of American geog- 

23 



24 NEW VIEWPOINTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

raphy were parts of an inseparable whole and constantly 
interacted upon each other, their historical consequences will 
be examined separately for purposes of the present discus- 
sion. 

I 

Ngo real was the physical isolation of the New World that 
the Christian era was fifteen hundred years old before the 
existence of the western hemisphere was known to educated 
EuropeX European peoples emerged from barbarism, great 
empires arose and fell, religious conflicts devastated the fair 
fields of the continent, while the New World remained undis- 
covered — a tremendous reserve of land with resources prac- 
tically untouched by its primitive inhabitants. Even 
Columbus's voyage might not have led to the rapid opening 
up of the New World had he not been favored by Nature 
in the selection of his place of embarkation and the presence 
of favorable trade winds. Due to these fortunate circum- 
stances, he chanced to discover a portion of the western land 
that utterly charmed a South European with its tropical 
climate, luxuriant vegetation and promise of trading possi- 
bilities. If, like John and Sebastian Cabot, he had touched 
upon a bleak and barren coast, the subsequent development 
of the Americas would have proceeded at a much slower 
pace. 

As colonies came to be planted in the western hemisphere 
by rival European powers, their American settlements found 
themselves drawn into wars that were the outgrowth of 
purely European causes and in which they had only a 
secondary interest. Geographic remoteness did not serve 
in this instance as a means of insulation ; but the preoccupa- 
tion of the European monarchs with international politics 
combined with the distant situation of the colonies to invite 
an attitude of inattention and laxness on the part of the 
mother countries toward matters of routine colonial admin- 



GEOGRAPHIC FACTORS 25 

istration. This affected the colonial development of the 
settlements of different countries in different ways. While 
the Spanish and French colonists found themselves placed at 
the mercy of tyrannous and incompetent local officials, 
the English colonies possessing liberal charters made the 
most of their opportunity to work out a system of colonial 
home rule untroubled by active interference from the mother 
country. Indeed, the English settlers cherished govern- 
mental ideals and enjoyed political rights which far exceeded 
those of their kinsmen in England. 

As new generations grew up in the thirteen colonies who 
had themselves never seen England, it was inevitable that 
the colonists should unconsciously begin to think of them- 
selves as a people possessing interests apart from the mother 
country and deserving recognition and protection from her. 
(The psychology of the colonists in 1765 was, in an im- 
portant degree, the imperceptible outgrowth of many years 
of geographic separation! Such a people very naturally 
regarded the new plan of imperial control, inaugurated by 
Grenville in 1 764-1 765, as the unjustifiable interference of 
an ''alien" government. An extreme though not unrepre- 
sentative expression of this attitude may be found in the 
resolutions of the town of Windham, Massachusetts, in 
1774, to the effect that "neither the Parliament of Britain 
nor the Parliament of France nor any other Parliament but 
that which sits supreme in our Province has a Right to lay 
any Taxes on us for the purpose of Raising a Revenue." 

(The success of the Americans in the War for Independ- 
ence was closely related to the geographic conditions of war- 
fare; Fighting on their own ground, the little American 
armies utilized their familiarity with the topography to 
launch attacks and effect strategic retreats which left the 
slow-moving British armies at a loss. The powerful British 
aggregations were forced to rely upon water transport and 



26 NEW VIEWPOINTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

were never able to penetrate into the back-country sufficiently 
to destroy the American forces. 

Far-seeing statesmen in the early years of our national 
independence fully appreciated the safety afforded by our 
physical aloofness from Europe and sought to make this 
fact the cornerstone of American foreign policy. "Our 
detached and distant situation," wrote Washington in his 
Farewell Address, "invites and enables us to pursue a 
different course" from that of Europe with her never-ceasing 
international embroilments. "Why forego the advantages 
of so peculiar a situation? Why quit our own to stand 
upon foreign ground? Why, by interweaving our destiny 
with that of any part of Europe, entangle our peace and 
prosperity in the toils of European ambition, rivalship, 
interest, humor, or caprice?" 

Events of the next twenty-five years caused the same 
thought to be repeated with increasing emphasis by Jefferson 
and later presidents. Mn the period from 1793 to 181 5, 
we know that geographic remoteness alone protected 
America from the devastating blows of Napoleonic ambition 
showered so freely upon the continental countries of 
Europe. \ It seems safe to conjecture that, if the new Amer- 
ican republic had been situated closer to the hotbed of 
European politics and intrigue, her course would have been 
beset with peril at every turn, a danger not to be lightly 
regarded at a time when men like Alexander Hamilton 
viewed the Constitution as "a frail and worthless fabric" 
and republican government in general as a doubtful experi- 
ment. As it was, the United States became involved in a 
quarrel over her neutral rights on the high seas with both 
Great Britain and France, a controversy that yielded a naval 
conflict with France in 1798 and a second war with Great 
Britain in 181 2. (Thus, it was from a purpose to capitalize 
our favored geographic situation that there originated that 



GEOGRAPHIC FACTORS 27 

well-established practice of American foreign policy, which is 
summed up in the familiar phrase: no entangling alliances.] 

Another great principle of American diplomacy owed its 
origin largely to geographical considerations. ^ The width 
of the Atlantic and the physical proximity of the Spanish 
American colonies were controlling factors in the formula- 
tion of the Monroe Doctrinei A series of revolutions had 
swept through these colonies beginning about 1810; and 
in 1822 it appeared that the so-called Holy Alliance of 
European despotisms would take active steps to reconquer 
them. The remoteness of Europe from these colonies em- 
boldened the United States solemnly to warn the powers 
against intervention, an action which the actual military 
strength of the United States in no sense justified. The 
interests of the United States were directly involved in the 
situation, for the success of European intervention would 
have led to the re-establishment of a principle of govern- 
ment, near our boundaries, which Americans regarded as a 
menace to national security. Hence, while sympathy with 
the spread of republican ideas was instinct in President 
Monroe's message, he explicitly emphasized the thought: 
"It is impossible that the allied powers should extend their 
political system to any portion of either [American] conti- 
nent without endangering our peace and happiness. ... 
It is equally impossible, therefore, that we should behold 
such interposition, in any form, with indifference." 

Generally speaking, the history of American foreign rela- 
tions has been marked by enlightened views of international 
right adopted in advance of the leading European powers. 
"From the beginning of its political history," says John W. 
Foster, the United States has "made itself the champion of 
a freer commerce, of a sincere and genuine neutrality, of 
respect for private property in war, of the most advanced 
ideas of natural rights and justice ; and in its brief existence 



28 NEW VIEWPOINTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

of a century, by its example and persistent diplomatic 
advocacy, it has exerted a greater influence in the recognition 
of these elevated principles than any other nation of the 
world." Here again geographic situation coincided with 
enlightened diplomatic statesmanship, for, being a country 
remote from the storm center of the world's wars, the 
interests of the United States were usually those of a nation 
at peace, and her object has been to secure for her citizens 
rights and privileges as nearly approximating those of peace- 
time as possible. The liberal views of American statesmen 
on such questions as contraband of war, definition of a block- 
ade and the inviolability of neutral vessels from search were, 
to a large extent, inspired by the unique geographic position 
of the United States and by the peculiar commercial ad- 
vantages inherent in such a position. 

'Since the Civil War much of the physical isolation of 
the United States has disappeared and the foreign policy of 
the nation has tended to change correspondingly. The 
steamship and the cable, the wireless and the airplane have 
all helped to cause the earth to shrink and to bring North 
America closer to the shores of Europe. After all, distance 
is not a matter of miles but, in terms of human relationships, 
it consists in the length of time required to travel from one 
place to another.'* In stage-coach days Boston and Charleston, 
South Carolina, were farther removed, for all practical pur- 
poses, than are New York and Havre in this age of steam 
and electricity ; and the distance between Philadelphia and 
New York was greater than an aerial flight from New- 
foundland to England today.^ 

When the republics of the western hemisphere, led by 
the United States, became participants in the World War, 
their action signalized the final crumbling of the barrier of 
distance before the onslaughts of modern science; and an 

irrecoverable blow was inflicted on an illusion of isolation 



GEOGRAPHIC FACTORS 29 



which had, in fact, ceased to exist. The peoples of the 
earth were shocked into a realization of a new world of 
contracted dimensions, a world that had become a neighbor- 
hood.\ A scheme for world peace through international 
organization was the natural concomitant of such a situa- 
tion. 

Many Americans deplore the passing of "splendid isola- 
tion"; but it should always be remembered that isolation 
was of greatest importance to the United States when the 
republic was small and weak, when, as Washington phrased 
it in his Farewell Address, it was necessary "to gain time 
to our country to settle and mature its yet recent institu- 
tions, and to progress without interruption to that degree of 
strength and consistency . . . necessary to give it . . . 
the command of its own fortunes." With the geographic 
barriers down, America stands face to face with new inter- 
national duties and responsibilities. 

II 

Not only were the interrelations of Europe and the 
western hemisphere affected by geographic conditions but, 
from first to last, the internal development of America was 
strongly modified by the same influences. The advance 
of European discovery and exploration was determined 
largely by the sinuosities of the coastline and the conforma- 
tion of the interior. The rapidity w4th which the New 
World was opened to European colonization was likewise 
dependent upon accidents of physiography. And, as we 
shall see, the dispersion of the later settlers throughout the 
vast hinterland of the continent was subject to a similar 
control. The discoverers and pioneers sometimes found 
Nature a harsh taskmaster, but more often they were likely 
to find in her a lavish patron. 

Columbus's voyages had been prompted by a desire to 



30 NEW VIEWPOINTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

discover a direct western route to the Far East; and when 
the truth was in time made known to the world that, instead 
of discovering the Orient, he had in reality found a great 
continental barrier blocking the route, the minds of discov- 
erers became obsessed with a new idea, the possibility of 
finding a water passage through the American continents. 
Every promising inlet or gulf along the shoreline now 
became the object of exploration. Cartier, Newport, Hud- 
son, Verrazano, Magellan, Champlain and a host of other 
adventurers, representing many different nations, took part 
in the fascinating game — and their efforts vastly broadened 
European knowledge of the topography and economic re- 
sources of the New World. 

\After a time the quest for a transcontinental waterway 
became of secondary consideration, for the interest of the 
discoverers and explorers had become captured by the allur- 
ing possibilities of America itself. \ Indeed, such an interest 
had been in evidence from the beginning; but it did not 
become the dominant motive of exploration until half a 
century or more had elapsed after Columbus's first voyage. 
It was a fortunate circumstance that, unlike the Pacific coast, 
the Atlantic shoreline of North America presented an invit- 
ing front to European seekers, offering so many open doors 
to the venturesome newcomers in its numerous rivers and 
indentations and in its spacious Gulf of Mexico. In those 
primitive days of travel the location and frequency of 
navigable waters were the controlling factors in directing 
the progress of exploration. 

^he Spaniards were for many years the most active in 
investigating the mysteries of the New Worldi Following 
the route of Columbus into the Gulf of Mexico, the Spanish 
explorers and conquistadores fell under the spell of that 
great inland sea, not unlike their own Mediterranean; and 
using it as their base of operations, they launched a series 



GEOGRAPHIC FACTORS 31 

of explorations and conquests, to the north and the west and 
the south, which yielded them almost the whole of South 
America and a goodly portion of North America as their 
reward. 

The course of French exploration, almost a century later, 
was determined very largely by the fact that, as an outgrowth 
of the discoveries of Cartier and Champlain, France had 
fallen heir to a string of inland seas, the Great Lakes, 
tapped by the mighty St. Lawrence.i Utilizing this natural 
advantage, as the Spaniards had the Gulf of Mexico, French 
missionaries and traders found their way into the very 
heart of the continent. They came upon the great central 
river of North America with its huge tributaries, followed 
the Father of Waters southward to the Spanish Gulf of 
Mexico, and established their claim to the imperial inland 
domain known as Louisiana. 

When the English undertook actively the work of explor- 
ing and colonizing in North America, they found themselves 
at a serious disadvantage since the Spaniards had pre- 
empted the lands to the south and French discovery and 
settlement were placing limits to their expansion northward 
and westward. Only the Atlantic coast south of the St. 
Lawrence and north of Florida seemed to offer them the 
possibilities they desired. ) Un fortunately, as it seemed, the 
great streams flowing into the Atlantic, discovered or 
claimed by the English, had their origin in the mountain 
ranges paralleling the coast, and therefore no very convinc- 
ing claim could be made by the English, under the interna- 
tional law of the time, to the extensive interior of the con- 
tinent. Even along the Atlantic seaboard the English found 
interlopers in the Dutch and Swedish settlements, but these 
feeble enterprises were summarily disposed of by conquest. 
L In the long run, the contracted dimensions of the area 
settled by the English proved to be a blessing in disguise. 



32 NEW VIEWPOINTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

VThe vast spaces embraced by the Spanish and French de- 
pendencies made necessary widely scattered settlements, thin 
populations, and the development of hunting, trading and 
mining as the chief occupations of the colonists. The con- 
sequence was a rapid exploitation of the country's super- 
ficial resources and the building up of communities that were 
organically unstable. The English settlers, on the other 
hand, found themselves hemmed in on the west by an almost 
unbroken mountain wall covered with a heavy mantle of 
primeval forest. By a decree of Nature they were confined 
to a narrow strip of tidewater area, sufficiently isolated to 
afford that protection and cohesion which a well-ordered 
colonial life requires, sufficiently large to permit of con- 
servative growth, and possessing that extended sea frontage 
so necessary for the development of a maritime people. 

In the century of conflict between the French and the 
English colonies, time was the strongest ally of the English, 
for time meant a more compact population, greater material 
resources, and a '\vider knowledge of the topography of the 
interior. Massachusetts and yirginia were longer estab- 
lished as colonies than the United States is today as a nation 
before the English had gained any exact knowledge of the 
great transmontane empire that lay to the west of the Alle- 
ghanies ; and their interest was then provoked by the attempt 
of the French to enforce their claims to the Ohio valley by 
a system of stockades commanding the strategic approaches 
from the English settlements. In this final great trial of 
strength, the French and Indian War, the English colonists 
availed themselves of the geographic peculiarities of their 
situation, planning their campaigns so as to take advantage 
of the routes through the mountains of western Virginia 
and Pennsylvania formed by river and portage, and of the 
deep natural depression in the mountains formed by the 
Hudson-Mohawk river system of western New York. 



GEOGRAPHIC FACTORS 33 

Handicapped by distance from their base of operations, diffi- 
culties of transportation and inferior numbers, the French 
lost the war and, with it, were forced to surrender their 
empire in North America by the treaty of 1763. 

Ill 

From first to last, the natural conditions which the 
European settlers found in America had a formative influ- 
ence on their character and outlook. This was particularly 
true of the English colonists who, unlike the Spanish and 
French, emigrated to the New World without let or hin- 
drance from the Crown. In the first place, the precarious 
voyage across the Atlantic discouraged all but the stout- 
hearted and ambitious from undertaking the adventure. 
Further than this, the dangers and hardships of living in 
the virgin wilds served to accentuate all the characteristics 
in which the original colonists had differed from their own 
stock in the Old World. The metamorphosis that occurred 
in the character and mental make-up of the early settlers 
marked the appearance of something new in the world. 
The impact of frontier life, with its generous economic 
opportunities, upon the European mind produced a complex 
of reactions which, for lack of a better term, we must call 
"American." 

From the standpoint of Englishmen, the earliest Amer- 
ican frontier was the seaboard itself, consisting of small 
isolated communities scattered along the inlets and river 
mouths of the extensive coastline. As we see it now, it 
was, in truth, a frontier very European in its traits with 
a society consciously modeled on European patterns and only 
unconsciously modified by the changed conditions of the 
American environment. By 1700 the outposts of white 
civilization had left the tidewater and made contact with 
the foothills of the Appalachians, forming what may be 



34 NEW VIEWPOINTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

called the second American frontier. This new frontier 
was as different from the original zone of settlement as the 
latter had been from Europe ; and there were quickly evoked 
those differences of sympathy and interest which differen- 
tiate newer settlements from old established communities. 
By the middle of the eighteenth century the mountains 
themselves had been reached, and pioneer settlement was 
to be found up and down the longitudinal valleys cutting 
across colonial boundaries in a northeasterly and south- 
westerly direction. 

The influence of physical conditions upon man can no 
place be better studied than in these successive frontiers, 
for there Nature held unmitigated sway and man was sub- 
jected to the severest tests. Cut off from the conventions 
of older communities, and tempered by the hazards and 
difficulties of wilderness life, men were counted successful 
for what they did, not for what their ancestors may have 
done. Like the castaways in Barrie's delightful play **The 
Admirable Crichton," the pioneers forgot those artificial dis- 
tinctions which had no validity in the stark facts of their 
daily existence ; for, in the presence of primeval Nature, a 
family tree is infinitely less important than the ability to 
make a forest clearing. 

Such conditions were productive of a race of men, sturdy 
in their individualism, impatient of restraint, and impetuous 
and resourceful in action. The fusing powers of the back- 
country were evidenced by the fact that its population rep- 
resented a wide mingling of ethnic strains, who lived together 
in harmony and shared the same general outlook on life. 
The character of the pioneer was rounded out and sealed by 
the economic conditions under which he lived : the abundance 
of land and the equality of material possessions. Such a 
diffusion of property inevitably begot the ideal of political 
democracy. 



GEOGRAPHIC FACTORS 35 

The physical background of colonial life, however, was 
not, in other respects, such as to promote a sentiment of 
unity among the people. In each colony there existed bitter 
political antagonism between the settlers of the older and 
those of the newer frontier because of their different needs 
and aspirations. While these differences were chiefly 
economic in character, they were deepened and perpetuated 
by the geographic aloofness of the two sections of the 
population. Intercolonial unity also suffered from geo- 
graphic conditions. In the seventeenth century, colonial 
settlements were feeble and far apart, each living in a 
world by itself, surrounded by forests that were difficult 
to traverse and confronted with dangers from wild beasts 
and the Indians. Rivers and coast waters were the cus- 
tomary highways of travel ; and, except along certain beaten 
paths, few men were venturesome enough to pass by land 
from one colony to another. Within its own environment 
each colony was engaged in working out its own salvation 
with little regard for the others. Each had its own problems 
to solve, which absorbed the time and attention of its people 
and tended to promote strong sentiments of individualism 
and particularism. 

These sentiments were strengthened by intercolonial 
rivalries, among which boundary controversies occupied a 
large place. Boundary difficulties began with the granting 
of charters to Maryland and Pennsylvania and continued 
to create friction among the colonies for more than a cen- 
tury. Hardly a colony but had at least one serious dispute 
over boundaries. Maryland was at odds with Virginia and 
with Pennsylvania, New York with Pennsylvania and the 
New England colonies, Massachusetts with New Hampshire, 
Rhode Island and Connecticut, Virginia with North Caro- 
lina. Other causes also contributed to intercolonial misun- 
derstanding, with the result that the people of one colony 



36 NEW VIEWPOINTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

were inclined to look on those of another with distrust and 
even dislike. In 1736 Colonel William Byrd of Virginia 
wrote sarcastically of the "Saints of New England" with 
their "dexterity at palliating a perjury so well as to leave 
no taste of it in the mouth" ; and so late as the Continental 
Congress of 1774, John Adams, one of the leading members, 
had to act cautiously and secretly in order to avoid arousing 
the antagonism of the southern delegates because of his New 
England connections. 

These centrifugal tendencies were eventually overcome 
only by forces which broke down the barriers of isolation. 
Facilities of travel and communication gradually improved. 
Whereas the first settlers had followed buffalo tracks and 
Indian trails, ferries began to be provided, fords discovered, 
bridges built, morasses filled in or covered with corduroy. 
Within the settled area of the coast, passable roads were 
built, more rapidly in the north than in the south, although 
it was not until the middle of the eighteenth century that a 
continuous journey from Portsmouth to Philadelphia was 
made possible. The increase of population, and the filling 
in of the unoccupied areas between the settlements, also gave 
opportunities for more frequent intercourse and consequent 
understanding. 

Another mighty factor toward the promotion of inter- 
colonial unity was the migration and mingling of the settlers 
of the back-country of the several colonies. Many Germans, 
of western N£w. .York moved into -P^tmsylvania and on to 
the mountain valleys of Maryland and Virginia. The 
French immigrants occupied the hinterland of both South 
Carolina and Virginia. The Ulstermen from Ireland, who 
came in such huge numbers, penetrated to the frontier dis- 
trict of New England, moved westward into the backwoods 
of New York, entered Pennsylvania by way of Chester 
county, and pushed. back toward the center of the province. 



GEOGRAPHIC FACTORS 37 

From there many went southward, following the foothills 
into Maryland and Virginia and even going as far as the 
Waxhaws of South Carolina. These wayfarers brought 
with them no narrow attachment to a locality and became, in 
a sense, the denizens of a larger country. 

On the foundations of this growing physical cohesion it 
was possible to erect a superstructure of political unity. 
When confronted with serious dangers from without, such 
as Indian wars or attacks from the French colonists, tem- 
porary unions of groups of colonies were formed. And 
finally, when the colonies faced what they considered the 
gravest menace of all, the plan of the mother country for 
colonial subordination, they were able to act together in the 
Stamp Act Congress (1765) and, most effectively of all, in 
the 'Fir srind Second Continental Congresses ( 1 774- 1 781 ) . 

IV 

The process by which waves of humanity rippled west- 
ward, paused, and began its movement again, did not cease 
with the conclusion of the colonial period, but proved to be 
a recurrent one which came to rest only in the closing years 
of the ninetgentli-century. There has been not one frontier 
in American history but, before the movement of population 
reached its final equipoise, a succession of frontiers, each 
hurling back its challenge to those who dared to brave the 
perils of an unbroken and obdurate wilderness. Each time 
a new weeding-out process occurred, by which the young and 
courageous spirits, together with those whose criminal 
conduct made them seek a refuge from justice, became 
the pioneers of the new zone of settlement. Thus the 
Americanizing process was a progressive one, each new 
frontier producing a psychology and a type of living less 
like the previous one and more decidedly "American" in its 
characteristics. 



38 NEW VIEWPOINTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

Coincident with the winning of national independence, a 
new frortier was already beginning to be established in the 
Ohio valley; and by the opening years of the nineteenth 
century, the vanguard of American settlement had reached 
the Mississippi river. The great flow of population into 
the^ heart of the continent was controlled by geographic con- 
ditions, for the settlers naturally followed the lines of least 
resistance offered by waterways, mountain passes and val- 
leys. One great stream of settlement passed through Cum- 
berland Gap and down the Kanawha valley into the Ohio 
river or, when it was completed, followed the Cumberland 
road. In the south picturesque caravans of planters with 
their slaves sought fresh tracts for cultivation by Agoing 
around the southern end of the Appalachian system or by 
directing their westward way through mountain passes into 
Georgia, Alabama and Tennessee. New Englanders found 
their natural passageway into the Middle West by means 
of the Mohawk valley and the Lakes and, after the Erie 
Canal was opened, they migrated in greatly increased num- 
bers. Generally speaking, the currents of population from 
the older sections of the country moved in roughly parallel 
lines from their places of origin. So great was the move- 
ment of population that eight territories — Tennessee, Ken- 
tucky, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Mississippi and 
Alabama — quickly became so populous that they were 
admitted as states, the last five between the years 1816 and 
1821. 

As in the case of the colonial frontiers, the problems 
connected with conquering the wilderness and vanquishing 
the Indian served to cause a rebirth of. American society 
and to rejuvenate the spirit of American democracy. 
Society found itself once more without the conveniences and 
the conventions of the older settled portions, and once more 
forced to find a solution for such typical frontier problems 



GEOGRAPHIC FACTORS 39 

as those of transportation and communication with the East, 
of rights of land ownership, rights of self-government and 
educational facilities. One of the significant contributions 
of the Middle Western spirit to American history came to 
be a strong attachment to the sentiment of nationalism. The 
settlers were emigrants from all parts of the United States 
and from many parts of Europe; but the great central 
valley of the continent made them all part of the same 
physiographic province. Moreover, they owed their en- 
larged opportunities to the gift of the federal government; 
and their allegiance went forth naturally to the government 
of all the states rather than to that of any individual state. 
Their exultant nationalism, their boastful speech and their 
chauvinistic spirit, all in harmony with the vast open spaces 
in which they dwelt, made them the butt of the ill-natured 
criticisms of Charles Dickens and other English travelers, 
who thought in terms of the cramped dimensions and con- 
gested populations of Europe and failed to see beneath the 
rugged exteriors of the western people. An anecdote told 
by Alexis de Tocqueville, a sympathetic French observer, 
illustrates the boisterous spirit of the time. In a crowded 
meeting certain officials were trying to force a way through 
to the platform. "Make way there," they cried; "we are 
the representatives of the people." "Make way yourselves," 
came the quick retort. "We are the people." It was the 
young Warhawks of this western country, unaccustomed 
to parley in their dealings with the Indians and impatient 
of the cautious diplomacy of the elder statesmen of the 
seaboard, who rushed the country into the War of 181 2. 
It was, in large measure, the irrepressible nationalism of 
the Middle West, which led the men of that section, time 
and again, to settle beyond the borders of the United States, 
and then to embroil the government in territorial disputes 
with the inevitable outcome of annexation and expansion. 



40 NEW VIEWPOINTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

No political leader ever raised the cry of territorial expan- 
sion without finding a warm-hearted response in this west, 
whether the object was Florida, Louisiana, Texas or Oregon. 

It may be noted, in passing, that the star of empire was 
guided in its movements by the lav/ of geographic gravity. 
Every addition of territory to the original domain of 1783 
was made in response to a desire to procure natural 
boundaries for the area we already possessed. Jefferson's 
original interest in the vast Louisiana territory was merely 
to secure American ownership of the east bank of the 
Mississippi at its mouth in order to assure American control 
of river navigation to the Gulf ; but the exigencies of Euro- 
pean politics gave us the whole hide in return for our interest 
in the tail. Even before this transaction was completed, 
Senator Jackson of Georgia announced in Congress: "God 
and nature have destined New Orleans and the Floridas 
to belong to this great and rising Empire." In a geographic 
sense the senator knew whereof he was speaking. In the 
absence of a physical boundary, Florida was proving an 
intolerably bad neighbor in the hands of Spain. More- 
over, some important streams draining the interior of 
Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia had their ocean outlets 
in Spanish West Florida. By the treaty of 1819 all of the 
Spanish territory east of the Mississippi river passed into 
the hands of the United States ; and the national boundaries 
stood flush with the Atlantic and the Gulf. 

A few years later the sentiment for Texas was increased, 
in a somewhat similar fashion, by the feeling of Americans 
that the Rio Grande formed the boundary which Nature had 
intended for the United States in the southwest. After the 
annexation of Texas, "Manifest Destiny" seemed to demand 
the extension of American suzerainty to the Pacific ocean, 
though the peaks of the Rockies might have been considered 
a natural divide ; and soon came such accretions of territory 



GEOGRAPHIC FACTORS 41 

as Oregon, California, and enough of the interior country 
to join Texas solidly with California. With these additions 
the continental mass of the United States seemed to reach 
an equilibrium geographically, and no additions of any im- 
portance have been made from contiguous territory since 
then. 

The democratic fervor which characterized the Middle 
West was produced rather by the equality of worldly posses- 
sions that prevailed than by the physical environment. 
Nevertheless it should be noted that the physical hardships 
of life on the frontier had attracted into the Mississippi 
valley a type of man naturally venturesome and uncon- 
ventional in his outlook in life. Such men seemed predestined 
to come to grips with the new and the untried; and when 
they came to frame their new state constitutions, it seemed 
natural and inevitable that they should defy the experience 
of the seaboard states by inserting provisions for universal 
manhood suffrage. 

Geographic situation was an important element in the 
growth of sectionalism that occurred between 1800 and i860. 
The prevalence of similar climatic and soil conditions 
throughout the Gulf states supplied the physical basis for 
the great cotton-growing industry and consequently for the 
attachment of the South to the institution of slavery. The 
great central trough of North America, continental in its 
dimensions, made the Northwest and the Southwest a part 
of the same physiographic area and foreshadowed a 
political combination of the Northwest and the South which 
should exclude New England and the Middle Atlantic states 
from the councils of the nation. If this were to be averted, 
it appeared that the very face of Nature must be altered. 

In a resolute effort to accomplish this, Henry Clay advo- 
cated the construction of internal improvements at national 
expense, planning by this means to vanquish the Alleghany 



42 NEW VIEWPOINTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

barricade and join the seaboard North and the Northwest 
through frequent intercourse and economic exchanges. His 
policy never won complete acceptance by Congress ; but the 
efforts of the federal government were ably supplemented 
by the appropriations of New York and other states for 
canals and highways. The union of the two northern sec- 
tions was finally accomplished by the construction of rail- 
roads in the forties and the fifties. Thus the North rose 
superior to natural obstacles ; and, partly due to this fact, it 
was able to present a united front to the South in i860. 

The campaigns of the Civil War, like those of every other 
war in which the United States has taken part, were deter- 
mined, to a very great extent, by physiographic considera- 
tions. The subject is too large for treatment here. The 
great strategic objectives of the armies of both sides were 
mountain passes, railroad centers, and the control of the 
waterways. The tremendous importance of rivers in the 
conduct of the war is reflected in the names of the Union 
armies : the Army of the Potomac, the Army of the James, 
the Army of the Cumberland and the Army of the Ten- 
nessee. Although railroads were more important than in 
any previous war, the lengthening lines of communication 
of the advancing federal forces made rivers more effective 
routes than the iron highways which could be easily destroyed 
by enemy raiders. 



Before i860 the frontier had already passed beyond the 
Mississippi river to the margin of the arid belt and, leaping 
the Great Plains and the Rockies, had firmly established 
itself on the Pacific seaboard. By 1890 the last of the fertile 
public lands had been transferred to private owners and 
the frontier, in an official sense, disappeared, although the 
last two territories of the Far West, New Mexico and 



GEOGRAPHIC FACTORS 43 

Arizona, were not admitted into the Union until 1912. 
Perhaps the most remarkable feature of this last continental 
wilderness of the United States was the unprecedented speed 
with which it was peopled. The age of steam and steel had 
arrived; and a few tons of coal applied to rail locomotion 
conquered distances and physical barriers in this new age that 
would have halted the progress of settlement for many years 
in the earlier stages of American history. 

The rapid subjugation of the trans-Mississippi frontier 
created vexatious industrial and social problems, new in 
degree and form but old as the frontier itself in kind. These 
problems grew out of the distance of the western producer 
from the market, the excessive cost of transportation, the 
consequent high prices of manufactured articles, and the 
low prices received for farm products. These conditions, 
partly geographic in origin, formed the substratum of a 
period of agrarian unrest which found successive manifesta- 
tion in the Granger movement, the greenback agitation, the 
movement for "free silver," and the more recent agitation 
against monopolies and "Big Business." 

The contact of American society at its fringes with con- 
ditions of primitive democracy gave a fresh impulse to the 
development of American equalitarian thought and practice. 
The thinly populated frontier states and communities served 
anew their function as laboratories of political experiment 
and social adaptation, making their greatest contribution to 
modern American democracy in the origination of the 
doctrine of equal suffrage regardless of sex. Out of these 
states, also, came many new political devices designed to 
insure the control of the people over their government, such 
as direct nominations, the initiative and referendum, the 
recall, and the popular election of United States senators. 

The passing of the frontier has had important economic 
consequences, for with the exhaustion of this great public- 



44 NEW VIEWPOINTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

land reservoir the poor man can no longer receive a helping 
hand from the government to make a new start in life. 
Hardly less important is the fact that throughout American 
history the frontier has served as the zone of most rapid 
and thorough Americanization. In the crucible of the fron- 
tier men of all races were melted down and fused into a 
new race, English in speech but American in nationality. 
Therein lay the secret of the "melting pot," which has con- 
stituted one of the marvels of modern times. Under the 
new conditions the imperative problem is to furnish a sub- 
stitute to perform the work which the frontier accomplished 
for us, and in spite of us, in the past. The present-day 
Americanization movement, in its various aspects, is a 
groping toward a solution of this difficulty. Whether the 
answer be found in new restrictions on immigration or a 
broader program of education, no question of our time 
merits more serious consideration and honest thought. 

In all probability the influence of natural conditions on 
American national development will be less important in 
the future than it has been in the past. The age of steam 
and electricity has neutralized many of the effects which 
proved vital determinants of political and social progress 
in the past. Mountains have been conquered by the railroad 
and the telegraph ; unproductive soils have yielded to irriga- 
tion and fertilization ; rivers have been rendered navigable 
and their courses changed. The long contest between man 
and Nature in America has been decided in favor of man; 
and for the future, man seems determined to create the 
kind of physical environment which is best adapted to his 
fullest development. 

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 

The publication of the History of^ Civilization in England (2 v.; 
L >ndon, 1857-1861) by the English historian, Henry Thomas Buckle, 
did much to open the eyes of historians all over the world to the 



GEOGRAPHIC FACTORS 45 

vital relationship between natural conditions and human develop- 
ment. A generation passed before students of American history 
made any constructive application of Buckle's ideas. The first 
systematic attempt to apply a geographic interpretation to American 
history was made by Nathaniel Southgate Shaler, who in 1884 con- 
tributed a brief section on "Physiography of North America" to 
Justin Winsor's Narrative and Critical History of America (8 v.; 
Boston, 1884-1889), vol. iv, pp. i-xxx, and later elaborated his ideas 
in his book entitled Nature and Man in America (New York, 1891). 
Approaching the subject from the standpoint of a geologist, he first 
traced in this volume the effects of terrestrial changes upon the 
fauna and flora of North America, and then devoted several notable 
chapters (vi-viii) to setting forth, in a large way, the influence of 
geographic variations upon the history of man in America from 
pre-Columbian days to the present. 

In 1892 the Englishman Edward John Payne published the first 
volume of his notable work. History of the New World Called 
America (2 v.; Oxford, 1892-1899). This work, which has never 
been completed, sought to explain the conditions of life among the 
American aborigines as the result of natural conditions, especially 
the nature of the food supply and the lack of useful domestic 
animals. 

In 1893 Frederick Jackson Turner read his epoch-making address 
to the American Historical Association on "The Significance of the 
Frontier in American History," later published in the Annual Report 
of the American Historical Association for 1893, pp. 197-227, and 
also in his The Frontier in American History (New York, 1920), 
pp. 1-38. Professor Turner's thesis, that "The existence of free 
land, the continuous recession, the advance of American settlement 
westward explain American development," is almost too well known 
to require re-statement here. Although Professor Turner phrased 
his thought in this and his other studies very largely in the 
terminology of the physiographer, the frontier is to him "a form of 
society rather than an area," and his chief importance to American 
historical thinking has, in last analysis, been his elucidation of the 
part played by economic group conflicts in our history. See pp. 
69-70 of the present volume. 

The fullest statements we have of the importance of physical 
influences in American history appeared in two books, published in 
1903, which had been worked out independently of each other. 
Albert Perry Brigham's Geographic Influences in American History 
(Boston) marked no important advance beyond what Professor 
Shaler had set forth in 1891. Ellen Churchill Semple's American 
History and its Geographic Conditions (Boston), couched in English 
of unusual charm, continues to be the best manual that has been 
written on the subject. 

A number of monographic studies along the lines suggested by 
these works have been carried out since 1903. A notable series has 
been written by Archer Butler Hulbert under the general title 
Historic Highways of America (16 v.; Cleveland, 1902-1905/ . 
In 1907 a notable Conference on the Relation of Geography to 



46 NEW VIEWPOINTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

History, presided over by Professor Turner, was held in con- 
junction with the meeting of the American Historical Association 
at Madison. The principal papers were presented by Miss Semple 
and Orin Grant Libby. See report of this conference in the 
Bulletin of the American Geographic Society, vol. xl, pp. 1-17. 

Students interested in this field should be acquainted with 
Professor Hulbert's article entitled, "The Increasing Debt of His- 
tory to Science" in the Proceedings of the American Antiquarian 
Society, vol. xxix (1919), pp. 29-42, wherein he summarizes the 
results that have been achieved from the application of a physio- 
graphical explanation to American history and suggests that fur- 
ther clarification might be brought about by utilizing the information 
made available by the climatologist, botanist, geologist, ornitholo- 
gist and hydrographer. Teachers of American history should be 
familiar with Dixon Ryan Fox's essay, "American History and 
the Map," introducing his carefully-prepared map studies in 
Harper's Atlas of American History (New York, 1920). 



CHAPTER III 

ECONOMIC INFLUENCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 



By the term "economic interpretation of history" is meant 
that view of the past which maintains that economic influ- 
ences have been the preponderant factors in the history of 
mankind. Although traces of this theory may be found in 
writings prior to his time, Karl Marx, the father of modern 
Socialism, is rightly regarded as the great formulator of 
the doctrine. Undoubtedly the association of Marx's name 
with the theory of economic determinism has caused many 
people to regard this point of view with considerable distrust ; 
and even the historians, particularly those in the United 
States, have been cautious about admitting themselves to be 
adherents of the doctrine. During the excitement of the 
World War, the avowal by a New York school teacher of 
his belief in the economic interpretation of history was 
regarded by certain members of the Board of Education 
as sufficient grounds for his expulsion. Perhaps the feel- 
ing of the ordinary man is best expressed by the witticism 
of a learned historian in an address delivered before the 
American Historical Association, to the effect that the 
members of this school of historical interpretation were 
responsible for putting the "hiss" into history. 

As a matter of fact there is no necessary connection 
between 3 beliel in the predominance of economic influences 
in hjstory_ and the doctrine of Socialism. Most historians 
who have subscribed to the former view are not Socialists; 

47 



48 NEW VIEWPOINTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

and, on the other hand, it is probable that few SociaUsts 
outside of the small circle of the intelligentsia know any- 
thing about this special theory of historical development. 
The economic interpretation of history merely represents 
an effort to explain, from the viewpoint of economic ten- 
dencies, the deep-flowing currents moving underneath the 
surface of the past. Socialism, on the other hand, is a 
prediction, one of a number of possible predictions, as to 
the direction, velocity, and goal of these currents at some 
time in the "future. 

Because of the popular confusion of the theory of 
economic determinism with Socialism, the student of 
American history may prefer to ignore the Marxian origin 
of the doctrine and claim for it an earlier and purely Amer- 
ican authorship. Certainly the thought underlying the 
theory has seldom been better expressed than by James 
Madison, the "Father of the Constitution," in No. lO of 
the Federalist Papers, which were written in 1787 and 
1788 to win popular support for the federal Constitution 
then pending before the state ratifying conventions. After 
pointing out that mankind has constantly been influenced 
and divided by differences over religion and government or 
by attachment to outstanding leaders, Madison added: "But 
the most common and durable source of factions has been 
the various and unequal distribution of property. Those 
who hold and those who are without property have ever 
formed distinct interests in society. Those who are 
creditors, and those who are debtors, fall under a like 
discrimination. A landed interest, a manufacturing interest, 
a mercantile interest, a moneyed interest, with many lesser 
interests, grow up of necessity in civilized nations, and 
divide them into different classes, actuated by different senti- 
ments and views." Here is an explicit avowal that, in the 
long run, history is the resultant of the interplay of social 



ECONOMIC INFLUENCES 49 

energies produced by differences in the amount and kind 
of material possessions held by the several sections of the 
population. 

. In attempting to apply the principle of economic inter- 
pretation to American history, one is at once confronted with 
the necessity of distinguishing between geographic or 
environmental injiuences, on the one hand, and the purely 
economic basis of American development, on the other. 
The fact is that the two classes of influences are sometimes 
so blended that it is impossible, or at least undesirable, to 
separate them. As has already been pointed out in this 
volume, the geographic background of history includes such 
elements as the contour of the earth's surface, the dis- 
tribution of land and water, relationships of the size and 
distance of natural objects and, in the larger meaning of 
the term, climatic conditions. Economic influences arise 
from the possession of property by man, or from the desire 
for such possession, or from the use of such property as a 
lever of political or social power. A mountain range might, 
as a geographic condition, obstruct the movement of popula- 
tion; with the discovery of gold, it becomes an economic 
influence which draws people irresistibly. 

II 

Historians have generally treated the discovery of 
America as being the inevitable outcome of the economic 
plight in which Europe found herself because of the block- 
ing of the Oriental trade routes by the Turks after the fall 
of Constantinople in 1453. That view now requires cor- 
rection, for Professor Lybyer has shown, from a study of 
contemporary documents and of the curve of prices of 
Oriental commodities in Europe, that the main routes of 
Oriental trade through the Levant were not obstructed by 
the Turks until some years after Columbus's voyage of dis- 



50 NEW VIEWPOINTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

covery. While this revelation disposes of the traditional 
view, it also serves to bring into sharper relief the commercial 
rivalry of the Atlantic countries, Portugal and Spain, as a 
factor in the situation. 

The merchants of the Mediterranean cities, Genoa and 
Venice, had been the chief beneficiaries of the old routes 
of trade ; these cities had waxed wealthy as termini and 
distributing centers of Far Eastern commerce. The aspiring 
monarchs on the Atlantic saw an opportunity to seize this 
trade, with all the profits accruing therefrom, if they could 
discover a water-passage to the Orient by way of the 
Atlantic. Thus Portugal, after some experimental voyages 
of discovery, put forth heroic efforts in the quest of a pas- 
sage around Africa, finally achieving her goal in the voyage 
of Vasco da Gama in 1498; and the Spanish Court, with 
grave misgivings, backed the scheme of the Italian visionary, 
Cristoforo Colombo, for a due western passage. In view 
of the opposition of economic interests involved, it is not 
surprising that Columbus should have been forced to leave 
Genoa in order to obtain assistance for a venture which 
promised the commercial eclipse of his native city. Had 
Columbus not appeared on the scene at the psychological 
time, there can be no doubt that, with the economic situation 
as it was, the discovery would have been made at about the 
same time by some other mariner. Indeed, there is absolute 
proof of this conjecture in the fact that the coast of Brazil 
was accidentally discovered in the year 1500 by a Portuguese 
captain who was blown out of his course by unfavorable 
winds while attempting to follow Vasco da Gama's route 
around Africa. 

The economic motive played a large part in the coloniza- 
tion of the New World. The main incentive to the estab- 
lishment of colonies was the desire of European monarchs 
to secure new sources of national revenue, to which must 



ECONOMIC INFLUENCES 51 

be added, in the case of the EngHsh colonists, the desire of 
the settlers to improve their living conditions. Spain was 
richly rewarded with great stores of gold and silver. The 
French and the Dutch found the fur trade a never-ending 
source of wealth. In the case of fhe~English colonists, as 
Professor Andrews has pointed out, the first efforts at 
planting colonies, made by romantic Elizabethan adventurers, 
were failures; and the beginnings of effective colonization 
grew out of the commercial ambitions of noblemen, mer- 
chants and capitalists in the Stuart period. They saw in 
the New World great opportunities for wealth, such as 
earlier Englishmen had seen in the Mediterranean and the 
Baltic. With few exceptions the British colonies in North 
America were founded as business ventures ; and even 
where the original motive was religious or philanthropic, 
there was, in most instances, also a commercial aspect. 

Two forms of promoting colonization were widely em- 
ployed by the English: the trading company, and the pro- 
prietary grant. The trading company differed in no essential 
respect from a modern business corporation. The money 
necessary for fitting out a colonial expedition — for trans- 
porting settlers and providing their food md clothing and 
implements during the initial years — was obtained through 
the sale of stock; and the stockholders expected dividends 
on their investment in the shape of furs or some agricultural 
or mineral product that could be marketed in Europe. 
Fortunately, these companies proved unsuccessful financially 
in Virginia and elsewhere ; otherwise the English settlements 
might not have developed beyond mere trading posts. The 
proprietary grant, on the other hand, was feudal in character. 
The proprietor to whom the land had been granted undertook 
the planting of a colony as one might set about the cultivation 
of a distant estate. He met the expenses of shiploads of 
laborers sent out to develop its resources, and expected re- 



52 NEW VIEWPOINTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

turns on his investment from the rental and sale of lands, 
tariff duties, and receipts from mines. 

While the latter scheme was more profitable to the pro- 
moters than the trading corporation (as witness the instances 
of Pennsylvania and Maryland), the historical importance 
of both forms of colonial promotion lay in the fact that they 
mapped out domains, and paved the way, for a spontaneous 
migration of Europeans who were animated, first and fore- 
most, by the prospect of their personal material betterment. 
Indeed, the original backers of colonization projects became 
discouraged as to their financial returns after a generation, 
in the case of most of the colonies; and the stockholders 
and heirs of the original grants were generally willing to sell 
out their rights to the Crown for a modest remuneration. 
One of the significant movements of the colonial period was 
the transition of most of the thirteen colonies from their 
original condition of private ownership and control to royal 
provinces possessing representative government. This trend 
was conditioned, in large degree, by the desire of both the 
English government and the colonials to participate in the 
vested interests possessed by the original promoters and 
enterprisers. 

The history of each one of the English colonies was 
marked by political antagonism between the people living in 
the coast towns and the settlers of the interior. Racial and 
religious differences, and intervening distance, contributed 
to this antipathy ; but the real contention between tidewater 
and back-country was an economic one. The men of the 
cities were merchants and capitalists, and the people of the 
backwoods, possessed of slender means, were generally in 
debt to them. This tended to divide the population of each 
colony on all questions of public policy arising in the pro- 
vincial legislature, especially those involving the economic 
welfare of the one group or the other. Moreover, the people 



ECONOMIC INFLUENCES 53 

of the interior were likely to be radical democrats, for on 
the frontier the small farm was the unit of economic life, 
and the terms of virtual economic equality on which the 
people lived taught them to believe that all men were entitled 
to equal treatment politically. 

Two of the prolific causes of contention in the domestic 
politics of the colonies had to do with fiat money and the 
^apportionment of taxes. The back-county where specie was 
scarce had greater need of paper currency than did the 
creditor and merchant class living in the older settlements; 
and the eastern members of the legislature endeavored to 
prevent that body from granting any relief. Likewise in 
the matter of taxation the inland farmers believed that they 
were being discriminated against by their tidewater brethren 
and forced to raise an undue proportion of the public reve- 
nues. In such contests the older settlements, even when 
numerically inferior, were usually able to maintain the upper 
hand because of the system of apportionment whereby they 
were over-represented in the colonial legislature. When 
the inequities of their situation became unendurable, the 
frontiersmen did not hesitate to take up arms in vindication 
of their rights. Some notable examples of this are to be 
found in Bacon's rebellion in Virginia, the Regulators' up- 
rising in North Carolina in 1770 and, during the Confedera- 
tion period. Shays' rebellion in Massachusetts. 

The prosperity and progress of the colonies depended upon 
their commercial connections with the rest of the world. 
As newly-settled farming and fishing communities, they could 
not with any wisdom develop their own manufactures, nor 
could they find a market for their surplus products without 
access to British or foreign markets. But they were under 
the wing of the greatest manufacturing and commercial 
nation of the earth ; and in the world as it then was, fenced 
ofif into exclusive trading monopolies, this connection with 



54 NEW VIEWPOINTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

England undoubtedly redounded to the economic advantage 
of the colonies. Recent researches have shown that, con- 
trary to a long-held opinion, the colonists suffered no real 
hardship from the regulation of their commerce and industry 
by Parliament prior to 1763 and, indeed, that they enjoyed 
some substantial benefits in the subsidizing of certain indus- 
tries (like indigo culture and timber production) and in the 
protection against foreign competition extended to ship- 
building. There is no reason to believe that the people 
during most of the colonial period were not as contented 
under British rule as the people of Canada are today. But 
a radical change in British colonial policy about 1763 threat- 
ened the economic welfare of the colonists and created such 
widespread protest and unrest in America that within a dozen 
years the colonists were engaged in launching a war for 
separation. As this matter is discussed at some length in 
a later chapter, nothing further need be said here about it.^. 
^The winning of independence brought with it a loss of 
the commercial advantages which the colonists had enjoyed 
by reason of their membership in the British Empire. ,- Since 
the federal government established under the Articles of 
Confederation lacked the power and energy to place Amer- 
ican business and commerce upon a stable footing, men of 
substance and national vision began a campaign of agitation 
for replacing the existing government with a new one pos- 
sessing authority to protect property rights, and to establish 
national credit at home and abroad. "I conceive, sir," de- 
clared Fisher Ames of Massachusetts, "that the present 
Constitution was dictated by commercial necessity more than 
any other cause." ^ After the new government was once 
established under the Constitution, the efforts of our diplo- 
macy were very largely motivated by economic considera- 

^ Chapter vii. _ 

^ The economic phases of the movement for the federal Constitution are dis- 
cussed in some detail in chapter viii. 



ECONOMIC INFLUENCES 55 

tions: the desire to recover old markets or to acquire new 
ones for our commerce, and the necessity of protecting our 
neutral trade from the encroachments of Great Britain and 
France during the Napoleonic wars. A notable series of 
treaties testify to the degree of success attained by these 
efforts. 

Ill 

The political history of the United States affords abundant 
evidence of the direct relationship between self-conscious 
economic groups in the population and political parties. 
Many illustrations might be cited ; but, for present purposes, 
the original alignment of parties between Federalists and 
Republicans in the first quarter of a century under the 
Constitution will suffice. The Federalists were, in the main, 
the same group who had carried the movement for the 
Constitution against heavy odds; they were interested in 
translating into effective statutes those clauses of that instru- 
ment which promised the establishment of the national credit, 
the security of property and contracts, and the protection of 
commerce and manufactures. In other words, the effective 
nucleus of the Federalist party consisted of merchants, 
money-lenders and capitalists. 

Alexander Hamilton's monumental financial plan, pro- 
viding for the funding of the debt, assumption of the state 
debts, a United States Bank, etc., reduced their ideas to a 
definite code, and undoubtedly served to anchor the young 
republic at a time when blustering winds threatened to drive 
it on the rocks. And it is to be noted that while Hamilton 
used the nation to buttress wealth, he also reversed the 
process and used wealth to buttress the nation. This is no- 
where shown better than in his project to have the debts 
contracted by the states during the Revolutionary War paid 
off, or assumed, by the federal government, an object which, 



56 NEW VIEWPOINTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

it may be noted, he attained only by means of a political deal 
with his enemy, Thomas Jefferson, whereby he agreed to a 
Potomac site for the national capital in return for southern 
votes for assumption. By this assumption measure Hamil- 
ton aimed to consolidate behind the new national government 
the support of all the men who in past years had invested 
their money in the securities of the state governments. The 
measure formed, in the language of Henry Cabot Lodge, an 
important link in Hamilton's system "to create a strong 
and . . . permanent class all over the country, without 
regard to existing political affiliations, but bound to the 
government as a government, by the strongest of all ties, 
immediate and personal pecuniary interest." 

Since the merchant and moneyed class formed only a small 
minority of the population, we find in this circumstance the 
economic basis for the philosophical and constitutional doc- 
trines of the Federalist partyi In order to protect their, 
peculiar economic interests in tlfe^esence of an overwhelm- 
ingly agricultural population, they became strong exponents 
of the aristocratic ideal of government — government by the 
few or the well-born. JTheir economic situation further 
necessitated a belief in a government strongly centralized and 
made of them upholders of a broad construction of the 
Constitution and of a military establishment. Likewise their 
foreign policy was susceptible of an economic explanation. 
Toward Great Britain they were consistently friendly, even 
to the point of agreeing to such an unfavorable treaty as 
the Jay treaty of 1794, for in the establishment of closer 
relations with Great Britain lay their great hope of recover- 
ing their commercial prosperity. For France the Federalists 
felt only distrust and hostility, for that country since 1789 
had become the abode of social unrest and doctrinaire 
radicalism. 

On the other side of the political fence, the Jeffersonian 



ECONOMIC INFLUENCES 57 

Republicans as faithfully represented the interests and aspi- 
rations of their rural constituency. The abundance of good 
farm land and the consequent ease of acquiring a livelihood 
relieved the farmers and planters of the need of govern- 
mental tariffs and other financial assistance in their economic 
life, and caused them to envisage government merely as a 
sublimated policeman whose sole function was to preserve 
peace and good order. Hamilton's ingenious scheme of a 
national bank, tariff system, and complete financial reorgan- 
ization seemed to them pure class legislation, officious intru- 
sions into a domain of interests wherein private citizens 
could best work out their own salvation. As they watched 
the Federalists at work, they became embittered against a 
government which appeared to be working in the interests 
of a strongly-organized minority; they devised a doctrine of 
state rights as their strongest bulwark against federal en- 
croachments; and, confident in their numerical superiority, 
they exalted^democracy — control by the majority — as the 
only proper government for a free people. Their attacks 
on the entrenched moneyed interests brought to their sup- 
port the workingmen of the towns, as yet an unimportant 
though growing element of the population. Without the 
prestige of Washington and the disorganized state of the 
opposition party, it is doubtful if the Federalists could have 
retained power as long as they did. With his death they 
quickly succumbed to the democratic tide and passed out of 
power forever. 

It seems unnecessary to dwell further in any detailed way 
upon the relation between political parties and economic 
group conflicts. In a general way, the National Republicans 
of 1828, the dominant element in the Whig party, and the 
post helium Republicans have in turn represented the inter- 
ests of the manufacturing and financial class. The economic 
basis of the Democratic party has been more complicated in 



58 NEW VIEWPOINTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

character but, except for a period of about twenty years 
before the Civil War, the Democrats have generally repre- 
sented the interests of poorer and less fortunate classes of 
society. 

IV 

The political events of the ^'Middle Period" of American 
history (1800- 1860) find their explanation very largely in the 
sectionalization of American Hfe which, during this period, 
divided the nation into three distinct economic areas, a broad 
western zone of independent small farmers, a northern sea- 
board section in which manufacturing was becoming the 
dominant interest, and a southern seaboard area wedded to 
cotton culture and slave labor. 

In the preceding chapter the movement of settlers across 
the AUeghanies into the heart of the continent was sketched 
with particular attention to the geographical conditions af- 
fecting the migration. It remains here to point out, more 
specifically than in the earlier discussion, that the vast 
majority of the pioneers who journeyed westward, 

Some to endure, and many to fail, 
Some to conquer, and many to quail, 
Toiling over the Wilderness Trail, 

were moved by economic considerations. As the East be- 
came more populous and economic competition grew keener, 
ambitious workingmen in the cities saw an opportunity for 
improved living conditions in the cheap lands of the Ohio 
valley; and farmers working the smaller and less fertile 
farms saw larger holdings and greater prosperity in the West 
also. The same attraction was felt by the people of the sea- 
board South, by the better class of the "poor whites" who 
saw in Kentucky and the free Northwest a means of escape 
from the degrading position they held in southern society, 
and by planters desirous of abandoning their worn-out lands 



ECONOMIC INFLUENCES 59 

for new estates in the black alluvial belt of the Gulf coast. 
Other economic incentives were at work as well. Let us 
analyze the successive waves of migration into the frontier 
as they have been so often pictured for us by writers on the 
subject. The desire for hunting and fur-trading animated 
the first comers. Then hard-by followed the land specu- 
lators. Next came men seeking new lands for cultivation 
or cattle grazing. As homes began to multiply, opportunities 
were opened up for business enterprise in commerce and 
transportation. So swiftly did one group follow another 
that sometimes they became an almost indistinguishable mass. 

The transfer of population from east to west occurred 
with amazing rapidity. In these early years, frontier con- 
ditions prevailed throughout the Mississippi valley, south of 
the Ohio river as well as north. Much the same difficulties 
confronted the pioneer in Mississippi and Alabama as in 
Indiana and Illinois and tended to give to the West a simi- 
larity of outlook. Great commonwealths were founded and 
admitted into the Union; and a new and threatening influ- 
ence, the outgrowth largely of the economic conditions of 
wilderness life, made its appearance in national politics. 

The West was totally unlike the older East in its sympa- 
thies, ideals and needs. The abundance of cheap lands 
promoted individualism, economic equality and a lyric enthu- 
siasm for government by the people. The major problems 
of the people had to do with the paucity of transportation 
facilities, and the lack of capital for the proper development 
of the region. With some direct connection through the 
mountains with the eastern markets, the western farmers 
might dispose of their surplus crops to much greater advan- 
tage and receive in return those manufactured articles which 
added so greatly to the comfort of living. With a greater 
abundance of fluid capital, local improvements of all kinds' 
might be made, economic enterprise stimulated, and the 



6o NEW VIEWPOINTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

region more rapidly developed. The national policies which 
the westerners favored were, as we shall see, the resultant 
of their democratic idealism and economic needs. 

New England and the Middle Atlantic states formed 
another fairly homogeneous economic unit. Throughout the 
colonial period and during the first decades of national inde- 
pendence, the economic life of New England had been 
centered in shipbuilding and the carrying trade. But the 
adoption of the embargo and other restrictive trade measures 
by Jefferson and Madison, followed by the War of 1812, 
led to a stagnation of New England commerce, though it 
created conditions ideally fitted for the stimulation of 
American manufacturing. While New Englanders who 
could see their future only in their past became disgruntled 
with the federal government and began a campaign of dis- 
affection and protest that culminated in the Hartford Con- 
vention of 1814, other men of the region, shrewder to seize 
a new opportunity, turned their capital from shipping to 
manufacturing. They saw that their section possessed an 
almost unexploited source of wealth in the abundant water 
power furnished by its swift rivers, and that, with the proper 
application of human energy, the wheels of industry might 
soon be made to turn. Hence, already by 181 5, 500,000 
spindles and 76,000 persons were employed in the manufac- 
ture of cotton, chiefly in New England, and the annual output 
of woolens was estimated to be worth nineteen millions of 
dollars. In the Middle Atlantic states — New York, New 
Jersey and Pennsylvania — manufacturing had already become 
a principal industry ; and their economic interests thus tended 
to unite them politically with New England. 

The new factories of the seaboard North produced so 
much more than had the old domestic processes that markets 
for the disposal of their output were needed in those parts 
of the country in which no manufacturing was to be found. 



ECONOMIC INFLUENCES 6i 

But to bring this about, two obstacles had to be surmounted. 
The difficuhies of trade with the West and the South were 
immense owing to the lack of proper means of transportation. 
Moreover, in these markets the eastern manufacturers and 
merchants found themselves in competition with English 
manufacturers who could undersell them because of their 
lower cost of production. So here, too, as in the case of 
the frontier states, was a combination of conditions that were 
productive of definite national policies. 

The third area that stood cemented by common economic 
ties was the South or, to be more exact in speaking of the 
early years of the Middle Period, the South Atlantic states. 
Since the invention of Eli Whitney's cotton gin in 1793, the 
attention of this section had become increasingly absorbed 
in the development of cotton culture. From a crop of negli- 
gible importance the total product leaped in 1800 to about 
thirty-five million pounds, of which a little more than half 
was sent abroad, and in 1820 arose to one hundred and sixty 
million pounds, of which more than three-fourths were 
exported. The rapid growth of the cotton industry was as 
important in one of its indirect results as it was in its direct 
effect, for it caused a rejuvenation of the institution of negro 
slavery. 

It is a truism of the historians that slavery was, at bottom, 
a geographic and economic question. Slavery had existed 
throughout the thirteen colonies at the start, but before long 
it had begun to show signs of thinning out in the northern 
section where slaves had no useful part to play in the pre- 
vailing system of economic life — small farms and mercantile 
establishments. Even in the South slavery appeared to per- 
form no vital economic function in colonial times except 
possibly in the rice fields of South Carolina and Georgia. 
During the high emotional excitement aroused by the Revo- 
lutionary War, steps were taken for the abolition of slavery 



62 NEW VIEWPOINTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

in all the states north of Maryland. At the time of the 
federal Constitutional Convention a general expectation was 
shared alike by southerners and northerners that the institu- 
tion of slavery was destined to gradual extinction in the 
course of the next generation or so. 

But the vast expansion of cotton culture due to Whitney's 
invention put the matter in a new light. Cotton culture was 
peculiarly adapted to the employment of slave labor. Its 
simple requirements, not involving the use of expensive 
machinery, gave systematic employment for most of the 
year and permitted the use of women and children as well 
as adult men. Cotton growing was so profitable that there 
was no incentive to a diversification of industry, for which 
slave labor would have been unsuited. The low cotton 
plants, moreover, allowed the overseer to superintend a large 
gang of workers. The new importance of slaves was re- 
flected in their rising market value. The prohibition of 
slave importation in 1808 at the same time that the demand 
was increasing made this rise unusually sharp. The average 
value of a good field hand about the time of the invention 
of the cotton gin was $200.00; by 1815 it was $250.00, by 
1836 $600.00, and in 1850 $1000.00. By 1850 the value of 
the slave property in the entire South amounted, at a conser- 
vative computation, to more than one and one-quarter billions 
of dollars. Corresponding with this new background of 
southern economic life, we find the teachers and religious 
leaders of that section at first palliating the institution and 
then, later, roundly defending it on moral, biblical and ethnic 
grounds. 

Having developed an economic system based upon agri- 
culture and centering in cotton culture, the public men of 
the South Atlantic seaboard became increasingly interested 
in political measures that would contribute to their sectional 
prosperity. From early colonial times the population had 



ECONOMIC INFLUENCES 63 

relied upon Great Britain for cloth and tools and luxuries; 
and with the development of English cotton manufactures, 
they found their most profitable market for raw cotton in 
that country. They were therefore opposed to any measures 
of the federal government which might interfere with this 
natural and mutually profitable exchange of goods. In the 
northern proposal of a protective tariff they saw only higher 
prices for the goods they consumed with no corresponding 
benefits for themselves. 

The period from 1800 to 1830 was a time of economic 
transition and change in the case of all three sections; and 
it was not until the latter date that the distinctive economic 
character of each was definitely fixed and the section had 
become politically self-conscious. The real inwardness of 
the history of the United States to the Civil War cannot be 
understood without constant reference to these cross- 
currents and countercurrents of sectional interest. It is 
possible here to consider only a few of the more important 
aspects of the history of that time. 

The West did not speak with undivided voice. One impor- 
tant element, led by Henry Clay of Kentucky and repre- 
senting the nascent industrial interests of the region, were 
ardent advocates of internal improvements at national ex- 
pense, and held, furthermore, that the United States govern- 
ment should assist the states financially by a distribution of 
the proceeds of the sales of public lands. The majority of 
the backwoodsmen were probably better represented by 
Andrew Jackson of Tennessee and Thomas H. Benton of 
Missouri, who had a simple and hearty belief that the diffi- 
culties of the masses would be removed when officers trusted 
by the common people were placed in charge of the govern- 
ment. This element, when forced to define their views 
further, revealed an inbred suspicion of governmental inter- 
ference in the affairs of the people; and, convinced that 



64 NEW VIEWPOINTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

banks had hindered rather than helped western development 
through irresponsible issues of paper money, they favored 
the disestablishment of the Second United States Bank and 
the use of "hard money" as the standard circulating medium. 
They believed that the federal government should hand over 
to each state the. unsold public lands within its borders; and 
as for the transportation problem, they would solve it by 
having the states appropriate the proceeds of land sales to 
that purpose and also through the initiative of private enter- 
prise. 

The major political interest of the northern seaboard states 
was focused on an adequate protective tariff system for the 
encouragement of domestic manufactures. As tributary to 
this central idea, the business class of that section were 
strong friends of the United States Bank, which made for 
stable money conditions, and of national aid to internal 
improvements, which would facilitate the marketing of their 
wares. The political acumen, and the economic substratum, 
of Henry Clay's much vaunted "American System" may now 
be apparent. By joining in political wedlock the two prin- 
ciples of protection and national internal improvements, he 
hoped to bind the Northeast and the West in a political alli- 
ance solidified by the consciousness of mutual economic 
advantage. 

There were, to be sure, other elements in the population 
of the northern seaboard section who felt that their interests 
were not served by the legislation advocated by the business 
and manufacturing classes — ^the mechanics in the cities and 
the small farmers. They were best represented in the poli- 
tics of the time by Martin Van Buren and, in general, their 
outlook on politics resembled that of Jackson's followers 
in the West. 

The people of the South Atlantic seaboard states were 
mainly interested in preserving or establishing conditions of 



ECONOMIC INFLUENCES 65 

free trade, an attitude and purpose which brought them at 
once into collision with the tariff demands of the northern 
manufacturers. They were not averse to the United States 
Bank, and only by gradual stages were they adopting pro- 
nounced views against national aid for internal improvements. 
Although they were watchful for any interference with the 
slavery system, the militant abolition movement was just 
getting under way in the decade of the thirties and, as yet, 
they had little to fear. South Carolina was still the chief 
cotton state, and John C. Calhoun was her prophet and 
statesman. 

It is now possible to follow these sectional economic needs 
and aspirations into the hurly-burly of actual politics. The 
John Quincy Adams administration, which came into office 
in 1825, represented a combination of New England with the 
Clay element of the West; and the laws enacted during the 
four-year period testified eloquently to the zeal of those two 
leaders in promoting the interests of their sections. More 
than twice as much was appropriated for roads and harbors 
as in the whole previous history of the country; and the 
tariff was increased from an average of thirty-three per cent 
under the act of 1824 to a general level of forty-nine per 
cent (1828). 

The election of Jackson in 1828 came as the result of an 
alliance of the planters of the seaboard South and the 
Jackson western element, assisted by Van Buren's followers 
in the Northeast. Under President Jackson, national appro- 
priations for internal improvements were checked, the United 
States Bank destroyed, the Specie Circular issued, the 
Indians ejected from Georgia; and in lieu of the surrender 
of the unsold public lands to the several states, the surplus 
revenue was distributed among them. Not long after the 
beginning of Jackson's term the flimsy character of the 
political combination that elected him became apparent. 



66 NEW VIEWPOINTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

South Carolina decided to take a stand against the protective 
system, even to the extremity of nullification, if necessary; 
but the leaders of that state discovered, to their dismay, that 
the president was inclined to be indifferent to their needs 
and determined at all odds to prevent any steps toward dis- 
union. The South Carolina group, followed by many indi- 
vidual Democrats in other parts of the Southeast, thereupon 
abandoned the party until a time should come when the evil 
Jackson influence had waned and the party might be made 
to stand for southern interests. 

Toward this culmination time was indeed working in 
behalf of the cotton planters. As the initial difficulties of 
pioneer life in Alabama, Mississippi and Tennessee were 
overcome, the plantation system of cotton growing was 
rapidly extended throughout that region. This westward 
spread of large scale cotton culture soon broke down the 
contrast between Southeast and Southwest. It is an eco- 
nomic fact of great political import that, whereas in 1824- the 
annual cotton production of the South Atlantic states was 
almost double that of the Gulf states, this ratio was reversed 
in 1 841. By the latter date it was beginning to be possible 
to speak of the South from the Atlantic to the Mississippi 
and beyond as a compact political entity. 

The Cotton South proceeded to organize itself to dominate 
the federal government and decided to use the Democratic 
party as its special instrument for that purpose. The leaders 
of the South were constantly kept acutely conscious of the 
peculiar economic situation of their section by the increasing 
severity of the anti-slavery agitation in the North. A power- 
ful and pervasive influence began to be felt in national poli- 
tics, the "Slave Power" or the "Slavocracy," in its operations 
not unlike the "Money Power" or the "Plutocracy" in the 
period since the Civil War. So successful was this new 
political force that from 1844 to the Civil War every presi- 



ECONOMIC INFLUENCES (i^ 

dential candidate of the Democratic party was a southerner 
or a northerner with southern views. The basic pohtical 
objects of the "Slave Power," other than the lowering of 
the tariff, were the extension of slavery into the federal 
territories, and the annexation of foreign soil suitable for the 
peculiar system of labor. These were two aspects of the 
same economic need since the prevailing system of cotton 
culture brought about the rapid exhaustion of the soil and 
necessitated expansion into undeveloped lands wherever they 
might be found. Moreover, the building up of new slave 
commonwealths enabled the South to maintain its equality 
in the United States Senate with the rapidly growing North. 

To be successful in national politics the cotton interests 
must add to their own voting strength the support of the 
pioneer farmers of the Northwest. How this was done is 
a record of shrewd political strategy that can be only lightly 
touched on here. In the campaign of 1844 the South won 
the support of the Northwest for the annexation of Texas 
by bracketing this demand with a demand for Oregon. 
Shortly after, when the question arose as to slavery in the 
Mexican cessions following the peace of Guadaloupe 
Hidalgo (1848), the southerners were willing to concede the 
principle of popular sovereignty for its solution, a device 
having a peculiar appeal to the pioneer Northwest with its 
predilections for local self-government. The same device 
was applied dramatically in 1854 when the Missouri Com- 
promise line of 36° 30' was abolished and the territories of 
Kansas and Nebraska were opened to possible slave settle- 
ment. 

But in this last manoeuvre the southern Democrats and 
their northern allies overshot themselves. The territories in 
question formed a part of the public domain which the 
northern farmers and workingmen, and the European peas- 
ants who had immigrated into the North, regarded as 



68 NEW VIEWPOINTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

peculiarly their own for settlement. The people of the 
Northwest thus became acutely aware of a fundamental 
antagonism of interest between the slavery system and free 
labor, and thereafter they were ready to join themselves 
with the anti-slavery idealists of the North in a battle to 
the death with the "Slave Power." From this combination 
of circumstances arose the Republican party, "a purely 
sectional party," as Stephen A. Douglas said, "with a plat- 
form that cannot cross the Ohio river." Henceforth the 
political alignment of the nation was distinctively one of 
North against South. When the Republicans proved suc- 
cessful in the election of Lincoln in i860, the dominant 
leadership of the cotton states believed that the only hope 
of safeguarding their future prosperity lay in the establish- 
ment of a southern slave republic. The economic antagonism 
of the sections, exacerbated, of course, by personal, political, 
ethical and psychological differences, thus plunged the nation 
into the great Civil War. 



It is hardly necessary here to advert to the fact that the 
superior economic resources of the North were the decisive 
factor in determining the issue of the war favorably to the 
Union. The South paid the penalty of having confined its 
productive efforts practically to the growing of one staple 
crop. From the moment that the federal blockade became 
effective, the doom of the South was sealed unless some 
military victory might miraculously turn the tide of events. 
The Confederacy hoped anxiously for recognition from 
Great Britain because of the dependence of British textile 
manufacturers upon southern cotton; but the British situa- 
tion in that respect was somewhat relieved by the importation 
of cotton from Egypt and India, and crop failures during 
i860, 1 86 1 and 1862 made the British people more anxious 
for northern wheat than southern cotton. 



ECONOMIC INFLUENCES 69 

The close of the Civil War was followed by an epoch of 
tremendous economic and industrial developmertt which 
transformed the whole fabric of American life and raised 
far-reaching questions of political and economic policy^ 
These matters are discussed at some length elsewhere in this 
volume/ and indeed form a part of the common stock of 
knowledge of our times. Suffice it to say here that our 
thinking today is perhaps more distinctively in economic 
terms than ever before. Any list of campaign issues will 
at once reveal this — such questions, for instance, as the 
tariff, the merchant marine, the currency, the railroads, trust 
regulation. Or any survey of newspaper editorials on 
domestic affairs — covering topics like the "open shop," co- 
operation, immigration, farmers' grievances, the high cost 
of living and profiteering — leads to the same conclusion. 

Although economic influences are probably no more potent 
in American life than earlier, they are more frankly accepted 
than ever before. Present-day politics is very largely the 
resultant of a complex of economic and social forces, 
working frequently at cross purposes with each other ; and 
the "principal task of modern legislation" continues to be, 
in the classic language of James Madison, "the regulation 
of these various and interfering interests." 

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 

John Bach McMaster broke new ground in 1883 when he pub- 
lished the first volume of his monumental work, A History of the 
People of the United States (8 v.; New York, 1883-1913), for it 
was his purpose to recount the history of the United States from a 
social point of view. Garnering his facts very largely from the 
files of old newspapers and setting them forth with photographic 
fidelity, he portrayed the life of the masses with a profuseness of 
detail that gave new realism to the old story. 

But Professor McMaster was concerned rather with reconstruct- 
ing a human chronicle than with accounting for the mainsprings of 
social conduct. The first historian who perceived the irnportance of 
economic influences in American history was Frederick Jackson 
Turner, who first expounded his views publicly in his address, "The! 

^ Chapter xi. 



70 NEW VIEWPOINTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

Significance of the Frontier in American History," printed in the 
Annual Report of the American Historical Association for 1893, pp. 
199-227. Compare p. 45 of the present volume. Professor Turner's 
main interest, in this and many later papers, was to trace the 
influence of frontier conditions, particularly the abundance of cheap 
lands, upon our historical development. The most important of 
these essays may be found in convenient form in his The Frontier 
in American History (New York, 1920). Although Professor 
Turner had reached his conclusions independently, it is a matter of 
interest that his main thesis had been set forth as early as January, 
1865, by Ernest Lawrence Godkin in his article entitled "Aristocratic 
Opinions of Democracy" in the North American Review (reprinted 
in his Problems of Modern Democracy, New York, 1896). 

Under Professor Turner's influence, a new direction was given to 
American historical research ; and many articles and books have been 
written by students who sought to apply his viewpoint to particular 
periods or aspects of American history. A bibliography of these 
writings would be too extensive for inclusion here ; but the mention 
of a few of the names of the authors will suggest the scope and 
character of the work that has been done: Reuben Gold Thwaites, 
Clarence W. Alvord, Solon J. Buck, Clarence E. Carter, Isaac J. 
Cox, Archibald Henderson, Homer C. Hockett, Frederic L. Paxson, 
Louis Pelzer and Milo M. Quaife. The Turner point of view is 
most felicitously presented in his own volume of essays, already 
cited; but excellent restatements may be found in Woodrow Wilson's 
"The Making of the Nation" in the Atlantic Monthly, vol. 80, pp. 
1-14; Archibald Henderson's The Conquest of the Old Southwest 
(New York, 1920), pp. ix-xix; and Frederic L. Paxson's The Last 
American Frontier (New York, 1910), chap, i. 

The Turner school of historians has tended to discuss American 
development in geographic terms and has generally avoided the 
expression, "economic interpretation of history" ; it has, on the 
whole, paid little attention to the role of industrial capitalism and 
the wage system in American history. Indeed it was not until the 
early years of the twentieth century that students of history began, 
frankly and comprehensively, to apply an economic analysis to 
American history. A strong impulse in this direction was furnished 
by the manuals prepared by several economists interested in deline- 
ating the economic and industrial history of the country. Not 
counting the earlier work done by J. L. Bishop and A. S. Bolles, there 
appeared in a short space of years Carroll D. Wright's The Indus- 
trial Evolution of the United States (New York, 1895) ; Horace 
White's Money and Banking Illustrated by American History (Bos- 
ton, 1895) ; Davis Rich Dewey's Financial History of the United 
States (New York, 1902) ; Katharine Coman's The Industrial His- 
tory of the United States (New York, 1905) ; Ernest Ludlow 
Bogart's The Economic History of the United States (New York, 
1907) ; and Guy Stevens Callender's Selections from the Economic 
History of the United States, 1765-1860, with Introductory Essays 
(Boston, 1909). 

A number of Socialist writers now came forward as avowed 



ECONOMIC INFLUENCES 71 

economic determinists and set themselves the task of justifying the 
Marxian view of historical development. A. M. Simons's Class 
Struggles in America (Chicago, 1903) and his Social Forces in 
American History (New York, 1912), Austin Lewis's The Rise of 
the American Proletarian. (Chicago, 1907), James Oneal's The 
Workers in American History (New York, 1910; revised and en- 
larged m 1912 and in 1921), and Gustavus Myers's History of the 
Supreme Court of the United States (Chicago, 1912) are richly 
suggestive, though untrustworthy, surveys written from the stand- 
pomt of Marxian exegesis. 

Not until 1913 did an American student of scholarly standing 
and scientific historical training undertake to apply the concept of 
econornic interpretation to American history with careful docu- 
mentation and infinite detailed analysis. In that year appeared 
Charles A. Beard's An Economic Interpretation of the Constitu- 
tion of the United States (New York), the first of a series of 
volumes under the general title An Economic Interpretation of 
American Politics, of which the second appeared two years later, 
Economic Origins of Jeifersonian Democracy (New York, 1915).' 
From this account it is not to be thought that other historians 
of our day have been unaware of the economic influence in Ameri- 
can history, for most members of the modern school have recognized 
its existence in a greater or less degree. Charles McLean Andrews 
for example, following in the footsteps of W. B. Weeden, P. A.' 
Bruce and G. L. Beer, has gone a long way toward rewriting colonial 
history from an economic point of view; and delvers in the later 
periods of American history are constantly making greater use of an 
economic explanation of events and movements. Nevertheless, it is 
a significant fact that the standard Cyclopedia of American Govern- 
ment (3 v. edited by Andrew Cunningham McLaughlin and Albert 
Bushnell Hart; New York, 1913) does not include the economic 
interpretation of history among the subjects for treatment. 

Advocates^ of the theory of economic determinism do not usually 
deny the existence of geographic, moral, religious and other forces 
in history nor the contributions made by great men. But, following 
Lngels, Marxs collaborator, they hold that even the ideas and 
ethical code of any age are influenced, and in the long run con- 
trolled, by Its economic background, although the acceptance of new 
standards may be delayed by the transmitted conceptions of a 
former age, which in turn had been the product of economic con- 
ditions once prevailing. As for the superman in history, they assert 
that, while his appearance at a particular crisis may seem to be a 
matter of chance, he is able to influence society only when society 
IS ready for him. If conditions are not ripe, he is called, not a great 
man, but a mad man or a visionary. The best critique by an 
American of the economic theory of historical development is 
Ldwin R. A. Seligman's The Economic Interpretation of History 
(2d ed., revised, New York, 1917). 




%^ 



CHAPTER IV 

THE DECLINE OF ARISTOCRACY IN AMERICA 

Aristocracy is something more than a form of govern- 
mental organization. It is an outlook on life that infuses its 
peculiar spirit of exclusiveness and superiority, of self -pride 
and special privilege, into all phases of human relationship. 
It is mirrored in the manners and morals of a people, in 
their religious organization and beliefs, in their provisions 
for education, in their language and their literature, in their 
labor system, and in the relations of the sexes to each other, 
as well as in their system of government and law. To 
Americans of today the most inspiring theme in American 
history is the story of the successive advances of the common 
man into rights and powers and opportunities previously 
monopolized by an exclusive class; we call it the rise of 
democracy. But to our anxious ancestors watching with 
deep misgivings the restless stirrings and recurrent upheavals 
of the nether strata of society, the changes that occurred 
appeared not as the working out of a beneficent destiny but 
as the degradation of all that seemed good and stable in the 
world. In their eyes each new victory won by the masses, 
whether in government or education or in some other depart- 
ment of life, signified the yielding of aristocracy to the com- 
bined forces of ignorance, avarice and mobocracy. 

The story of the struggle of aristocracy against democracy 
is a complex one, touching the life of the past generations 
of Americ'an society at many vital points and throwing much 
light upon the processes of human progress. In the sketch 

72 

h 



DECLINE OF ARISTOCRACY IN AMERICA 73 

that follows it is only possible to dwell upon some of the 
outstanding phases of this long conflict. 



Judged by our present-day standards, the aristocratic idea 
was firmly enthroned in the life of the people in colonial 
times. At the apex of the social pyramid stood the colonial 
governor with the official class that surrounded him, consti- 
tuting a caste that looked to England not only for its govern- 
mental authority but also for its models and standards of 
social conduct. Life at the governor's court was gay and 
extravagant, and frequently brilliant ; to become members 
of the charmed circle was the aspiration, and sometimes the. 
despair, of the colonial aristocracy which ranked next in the 
social scale. 

In every province such a native aristocratic class had 
developed irrespective of the lowly European antecedents of 
the original settlers. Social and political leadership in New 
England belonged as a matter of custom to the '* well-born" — 
the clergy, the professional classes, and the wealthier mer- 
chants. Seats in the meeting-houses, places at the table and 
in processions, were regulated with a nice regard for social 
differentiation. Even at Harvard College students were 
seated according to social rank, whereby John Adams found 
himself fourteenth in a class of twenty-four. In New 
York, pre-eminence belonged to the landed gentry, living in 
feudal elegance on their great estates along the Hudson, and 
dominating the affairs of the province by the aid of their 
connections, through business or marriage, with the wealthy 
merchant families of New York city. In the neighboring 
province of Pennsylvania a similar position was occupied by 
a compact group of rich Quaker families dwelling in the 
eastern counties of the province. 

Class distinctions were even more rigidly maintained in 



74 NEW VIEWPOINTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

the provinces to the south. In those parts was to be found 
an aristocracy of birth and manners which more nearly 
approached its counterpart in England than anything else 
to be found in America. Composed of the owners of great 
plantations and resting on a vital distinction between slave 
labor and gentlemanly leisure, the members of this exclusive 
order lived a life of luxurious ease, educated their sons 
abroad, and prided themselves on keeping abreast the modish 
fashions of London society. 

As befitted their social position, the aristocratic class in 
all the colonies occupied the seats of power in provincial 
politics. In order to insure their control they did not rely 
solely upon a popular acceptance of their superior qualifica- 
tions, for they entertained no exalted notions as to the mental 
acuteness of the average man. Hence the right to vote was 
nowhere bestowed upon all men, only on such white adult 
men as possessed a stated amount of property; and in most 
provinces they must in addition subscribe to certain religious 
tenets. For fear that the ease of acquiring land might ren- 
der some of these restrictions nugatory in the outlying dis- 
tricts, the ruling class employed certain additional devices to 
safeguard their privileged position. A favorite method was 
to postpone the political organization of the new communi- 
ties as long as possible, and then to allow them a dispropor- 
tionately small representation in the provincial legislature. 
As a result of such practices, the mass of the population 
in every province was excluded from participation in the 
government, to the great glory of the aristocracy. 

Traces of the aristocratic principle were likewise to be 
found in education and religion. In Massachusetts and 
Connecticut alone was a system of public education estab- 
lished; and in Pennsylvania and Virginia, several free 
elementary schools for the poor had been founded under 
private auspices. It was in large degree true elsewhere that 



DECLINE OF ARISTOCRACY IN AMERICA 75 

schools of any kind were rare ; and ''higher education" was 
the prerogative of the wealthy few. In four of the southern 
provinces the Church of England was the established church, 
supported out of public funds, and in Virginia no one could 
be legally married except by a minister of the established 
church. Throughout the colonial period the Congregational 
Church occupied a similarly privileged position in Massa- 
chusetts and Connecticut. 

The distinction between ''gentle folk" and "simple men" 
was maintained everywhere throughout the colonies, not 
merely as a badge of social distinction but also as a deterrent 
to the political, educational and social advancement of those 
of ungentle rearing. The periwig and knee breeches were 
the outward token of the inner superiority of the gentleman. 
The mean-born accepted as their meed the bobwig and plain 
baggy waistcoats or even the unlovely pantaloons. The line 
of cleavage was unmistakable and of obvious convenience; 
and one can readily understand the wrath with which that 
fine old aristocrat, Governor Hutchinson of Massachusetts, 
charged that in one of the Stamp Act riots "there were fifty 
gentlemen, actors in this scene, disguised with trousers and 
jackets on." The inferior class were numerically in the 
great majority; they were the small farmers, the shop- 
keepers, the sailors, the artisans, and mechanics — the plain 
people of the time. They were saved from being the base 
of the social pyramid only by the fact that below them, 
separated by an infinite gulf, were the enslaved negroes. 

As the colonial period approached its close, there began 
to appear signs that the long-established security of the privi- 
leged order was being threatened. The fact that land was 
abundant and easily obtainable by those who were willing to 
undergo the hardships of frontier life made it impossible 
to build up a rigid and enduring caste system such as existed 
in the countries of the Old World. The backcountrymen 



^6 NEW VIEWPOINTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

always proved to be a source of equalitarian feeling; and 
their "leveling spirit" vv^as undoubtedly accentuated by the 
addition of groups of immigrants unfamiliar with and dis- 
regardful of petty class distinctions in the New World. 
The period of agitation preceding the Revolutionary War 
added fuel to the flames of anti-aristocratic feeling, for the 
great tidewater leaders and pamphleteers, seeking to place 
the controversy with the mother country on a dignified 
philosophical plane, unintentionally aroused the plain people 
to a high degree of excitement and self-assertion, through 
their constant employment of such expressions as ''the 
natural rights of men" and ''no taxation without represen- 
tation." In particular the artisans and mechanics of the 
towns were galvanized into group-consciousness and, not- 
withstanding their legal exclusion from the franchise, they 
insisted upon playing an equal part with the well-to-do in 
the mass-meetings and informal conventions that charac- 
terized the period. "The mob begin to think and to reason," 
was the acute observation of Gouverneur Morris in 1774, 
himself an aristocrat. "Poor reptiles ! it is with them a vernal 
morning ; they are struggling to cast off their winter's slough, 
they bask in the sunshine, and ere noon they will bite, depend 
upon it. The gentry begin to fear this." 

In the face of this alarming situation, the security of the 
aristocracy depended upon presenting a united front to the 
pretensions of the unprivileged orders ; but the nature of the 
controversy with the British government was such as to 
render this impossible. The colonial aristocracy found itself 
of two minds. The wealthier merchants and many of the 
distinguished leaders in colonial politics (like Thomas 
Hutchinson, Joseph Galloway and Daniel Dulany) were im- 
pelled by every influence of tradition and social connection 
to ally themselves with the British side notwithstanding their 
strong colonial sympathies. "If I must be devoured," 



DECLINE OF ARISTOCRACY IN AMERICA -jj 

declared one of their number, **let me be devoured by the 
jaws of a lion, and not gnawed to death by rats and vermin." 
When the armed conflict came, thousands of men and women, 
bearing the stigma of "Tory," were forced to flee their native 
land, many of them settling in Canada where they became 
the Pilgrim Fathers of that great dominion. Their estates 
and fortunes were confiscated by the revolutionary state 
governments ; and decrees of proscription were issued against 
their possible return. This expatriation was likened by a 
contemporary to the expulsion of the Huguenots upon the 
revocation of the Edict of Nantes. But other members of 
the upper class, like the landed gentry of the South and some 
of the great Quaker merchants, cast their fate with the 
revolutionists, although many of them seriously disapproved 
of the extremist doctrines advocated by the popular leaders. 
This branch of the aristocracy, though seriously weakened 
by the defection of the loyalists, was eventually to be instru- 
mental in restoring the caste idea in American life. 

II 

The first great official denunciation of aristocratic rule 
that we have in American history was contained in the 
Declaration of Independence, adopted July 4, 1776. This 
document was written under a high pressure of excitement, 
phrased by a revolutionist of a visionary turn of mind, and 
designed to rally to the American cause the liberals of 
America and Europe. It has therefore not erroneously been 
called a political platform. Its preamble is the most eloquent 
and succinct defense of the rights of the masses and of 
popular rule that can be found anywhere in the English 
language. Every foe of aristocracy the world over has 
pondered its glowing periods and adapted them to his own 
uses. "We hold these truths to be self-evident," read the 
immortal words, "that all men are created equal, that they 



78 NEW VIEWPOINTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, 
that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happi- 
ness. That to secure these rights, Governments are insti- 
tuted among Men, deriving their just powers from the 
consent of the governed. That whenever any form of 
Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right 
of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new 
Government, laying its foundation on such principles and 
organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem 
most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness." 

But it was one thing to hurl these exalted sentiments 
against the King of England and the colonial representatives 
of his prerogative, and another to apply the bold precepts to 
the conditions under which people actually lived in America. 
The members of the aristocratic class who had joined the 
revolutionary movement had no intention of surrendering 
their own special privileges in government and society simply 
because they had joined with the unlettered masses m re- 
pudiating all political connection with royal Britain. What 
the phrase in the Declaration respecting equality of birth 
meant to the signers, it is difficult to say; but it is certain 
that they had no notion of setting forth a program of 
domestic reform. Neither at that time nor for many years 
later were all persons in America equal before the law or 
in the making of the law. 

The actual conditions have already been touched on and 
may be summed up as follows : One-sixth of the population, 
woolly-haired and of dusky hue, were held in slavery. Of 
the remainder of the people, one sex, notwithstanding its 
white skin, was regarded as politically and legally inferior to 
the other sex. White men were ordinarily regarded as pos- 
sessing equal civil rights, but the great majority of them were 
excluded from political participation and from educational 
advantages. To be sure, aristocracy in America lacked one 



DECLINE OF ARISTOCRACY IN AMERICA 79 

important sanction of the upper class in Europe since it did 
not possess hereditary titles; but it might well have taken 
pride in the fact that it retained its privileged position amidst 
a race of people who, notwithstanding the fetters and handi- 
caps that have been mentioned, possessed at that time greater 
freedom than any other people in the world. 

The era of post bellum reconstruction, known as the 
Confederation period, undoubtedly gave the aristocracy its 
moments of fear and consternation. Its prerogatives were 
seriously jeopardized by the social ferment of the times ; but 
the net result, as we shall see, was a vindication of the well- 
bom to the positions of leadership and public trust. The 
first state constitutions adopted by the colonies shortly after 
the beginning of the war had continued the traditional 
political distinctions between class and mass and were based 
upon the principle — the Declaration of Independence to the 
contrary notwithstanding — that governments derive their just 
powers from the men of property and tax-payers. Only men 
possessing a property stake were permitted to vote, and the 
right to hold office was further restricted to those who owned 
a larger amount of property than the ordinary voter. 
Religious restrictions also remained substantially as before. 
The chief manifestation of anti-aristocratic feeling in these 
first constitutions appeared in the introduction of new rules 
regarding the inheritance of estates when the owner died 
intestate. Primogeniture, which existed in colonial New 
York and the southern provinces, and the assignment of 
double portions to the eldest son, which was the practice in 
certain other provinces, were done away with. Likewise, 
entails were abolished in four states. Thus the American 
aristocracy was deprived of these important Old World props 
to the maintenance of a landed gentry.^ 

^ The same principle was extended a few years later to the public domain 
northwest of the Ohio river by the Ordinance of 1787. 



8o NEW VIEWPOINTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

A more serious threat to the ascendant position of the 
aristocracy resulted from the disorganization of the life of 
the people by the impact of the war. Intense popular oppo- 
sition greeted the formation of the Society of the Cincinnati, 
organized by veterans of the Revolutionary War, because 
of the fear that the public liberties would be endangered by 
a secret military organization in which membership was to 
be perpetuated by hereditary grant. In a number of states 
the party of the masses gained control of the government 
and assailed wealth by the issuance of fiat money and the 
passage of laws for postponing the payment of debts; else- 
where, as in New Hampshire and Massachusetts, the waning 
respect for constituted authority was shown in mob demon- 
strations and armed uprisings. County conventions in 
Massachusetts in 1784 and 1785 declared that the state senate 
should be abolished and that property should be owned in 
common. 

No events could have better demonstrated to the satis- 
faction of the aristocracy the incapacity of the masses for 
self-government; and with a zeal animated by despair, it 
turned every energy to recovering its lost ascendancy in 
public affairs. The leaders of the federal Constitutional 
Convention, which assembled in 1787, were brutally frank 
in passing judgment on the merits of government by the 
people. Elbridge Gerry, confessing that he "had been too 
republican heretofore," declared that "the evils we experience 
flow from the excess of democracy." Alexander Hamilton 
denounced the masses as "turbulent and changing; they sel- 
dom judge or determine right," and ventured the opinion 
that the British form of government was "the best in the 
world." Like Gerry, Edmund Randolph believed that the 
evils of the country had their origin "in the turbulence and 
follies of democracy." Gouverneur Morris held that there 
was no more reason to entrust the vote to "the ignorant & 



DECLINE OF ARISTOCRACY IN AMERICA 8i 

the dependent" than to children. Roger Sherman thought 
that the people directly "should have as little to do as may 
be about the government." 

The Constitution as it was framed by the Convention was 
well calculated to keep the plain people in a subordinate place 
and to assure political power to the men of substance and 
quality. Only one branch of the federal government was 
made directly elective by the people — and the separate states 
were permitted to continue to restrict the franchise as they 
chose. The more powerful branch of Congress, the Senate, 
was to be chosen by the state legislatures acting in behalf of 
the people. The president was to be selected by a special 
group of men in each state, who were presumably wiser than 
ordinary men and who should be chosen in any manner that 
the state legislature might specify. This meant, in states 
where the legislatures themselves assumed the duty of ap- 
pointing the presidential electors, that the chief executive of 
the nation was three removes from direct popular election. 
It was further provided that the members of the federal 
judiciary should be appointed by the two branches of the 
government that had no immediate contact with the voters, 
the President and the Senate, and that the appointment 
should be virtually for life. Arthur Lee, among others, 
confidently predicted that from such a system "an oligarchy" 
would arise and govern the country to its will. 

The influential leaders who came into power under the 
new instrument were bent upon giving a distinctively aristo- 
cratic cast to the government that was thus set in motion. 
The guiding genius of the new regime, Alexander Hamilton, 
freely admitted to his intimates that the Constitution was 
imperfect to the extent that it fell short of a constitutional 
monarchy but that he intended to do what he could "to prop 
the frail and wortliless fabric." Jefferson tells us that when 
he arrived at the capital in 1790 from France to take his post 



82 NEW VIEWPOINTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

as Secretary of State, "I found a state of things, in the 
general society of the place, which I could not have supposed 
possible. Being a stranger there, I was feasted from table 
to table, at large set dinners, the parties generally from 
twenty to thirty. The revolution I had left, and that we 
had just gone through in the recent change of our govern- 
ment, being the common topics of conversation, I was 
astonished to find the general prevalence of monarchical 
sentiments, insomuch that in maintaining those of repub- 
licanism, I had always the whole company on my hands, 
never scarcely finding among them a single co-advocate in 
that argument. . . . The furthest that any one would go, in 
support of the republican features of our new government, 
would be to say, 'the present Constitution is well as a begin- 
ning, and may be allowed a fair trial ; but it is, in fact, only a 
stepping-stone to something better.* " 

One of the early concerns of the Hamiltonian group was 
to attempt to invest the president with the trappings and 
ceremonials of European monarchy. The Senate labored 
painstakingly at the task of discovering an appropriate title 
for the chief executive, deciding at one time on "Elective 
Majesty" and again on "His Highness, the President of the 
United States of America, and Protector of their Liberties." 
Only the obduracy of the popular branch prevented the offi- 
cial adoption of a title ; and subsequent efforts took on more 
subtle forms perforce. Thus, Hamilton's newspaper organ, 
the Gazette of the United States, was in the habit of treating 
official functions after this style: "The principal ladies of 
the city have with the earliest attention and respect paid their 
devoirs to the amiable consort of our beloved president, 
namely, the Lady of his Excellency the Governor, Lady 
Stirling, Lady Mary Watts, Lady Kitty Duer, La Marchi- 
oness de Brehan, the ladies of the Most Honorable Mr. 
Layton, the Most Honorable Mr. Dalton, the Mayoress, Mrs. 



DECLINE OF ARISTOCRACY IN AMERICA 83 

Livingston of Clermont, Lady Temple . . . and a large 
number of other respectable characters." After the fashion 
of European monarchs, the president gave formal weekly- 
levees to an invited list of guests; and it is said that when 
Mrs. Washington found a trace of dirt on her wall after one 
of the receptions, she exclaimed angrily: ''It was no Fed- 
eralist; none but a filthy Democrat would mark a place on 
the wall with his good-for-nothing head in that manner." 

The democratic spirit of revolutionary times was subdued 
but, as events were to show, not conquered. Indeed, while 
the Federalists were still in the full sway of their power, 
aristocracy was being insidiously attacked in some of its 
supports through changes in state constitutions decreeing 
the separation of church and state. The Anglican Church 
had been disestablished in Virginia as early as 1778. During 
the Federalist regime, most of the states abolished religious 
qualifications for voting and office-holding. In national poli- 
tics a political party was being formed by Jefferson and 
Madison who made all possible capital out of the aristocratic 
tendencies of the Federalists, calling them "monocrats," 
"monarchists" and "Anglomaniacs." The latter retaliated by 
calling the opposition party by the opprobrious name of 
"democrats." 

The government of wealth and intelligence, as carried on 
by the Federalists, bore fruit in an unparalleled crop of 
constructive legislation under Washington and Adams; but 
the general opinion that many of these laws were despotic 
and designed primarily for the welfare of the ruling class 
aroused a popular clamor that made inevitable their dismissal 
from the seats of authority. 

Ill 

In 1 80 1 a new period opened in the history of aristocracy 
in America with the accession of the Jeffersonian Re- 



84 NEW VIEWPOINTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

publicans to power. The event was hailed by the Republicans 
as a return to the principles for which the War for Indepen- 
dence had been fought. 'The Revolution of 1776 is com- 
plete" was their exultant cry. But the Federalists stood 
aghast at the disaster which they believed had befallen their 
country. Theodore Dwight of Connecticut asserted in a 
Fourth of July oration that the great object of democracy 
was "to destroy every trace of civilization in the world, and 
force mankind back into a savage state. . . . We have 
a country governed by blockheads and knaves; the ties of 
marriage with all its felicities are severed and destroyed; 
our wives and daughters are thrown into the stews; our 
children are cast into the world from the breast and are 
forgotten. . . . Can the imagination paint anything more 
dreadful this side of hell?" Cabot, a Massachusetts leader, 
declared that by democracy was meant "the government of 
the worst." Both Hamilton and Rufus King apprehended "a 
bloody anarchy" as the consequence of the leveling tenden- 
cies of the times; and Henry Cabot Lodge tells us in his 
biography of the former that the reason Hamilton accepted 
Burr's challenge to the fatal duel was because he desired to 
keep himself available for military leadership in the struggle 
for the establishment of law and order, which he regarded as 
the inevitable outcome of government by Jefiferson's rabble. 
But Jeffersonian democracy did not, as a matter of fact, 
cause the doom of the caste principle in American society 
and government. On the contrary, it perpetuated it in a 
more enlightened and less offensive form. In the retrospect 
of history it is clear that political power had shifted from a 
mercantile aristocracy built on English models tc a landed 
aristocracy fully acclimated to the American environment. 
The great planters of the South supplied the atmosphere of 
gentility in which the federal administration at Washington 
moved and had its being; and the presidency for six admin- 



DECLINE OF ARISTOCRACY IN AMERICA 85 

istrations fell, almost as a matter of right, to a line of 
succession known as the "Virginia Dynasty." From the 
viewpoint of subsequent progress toward democracy, 
*'Jeffersonian aristocracy" seems the appropriate term to 
employ, for the mass of the people still continued very largely 
as spectators of events. 

The philosophical outlook of the new aristocracy was, to 
be sure, quite different from the old. Where the latter had 
regarded itself as fashioning public policy in the interests of 
the superior class, the former prided itself as functioning as 
the guardian and protector of the masses. Yet, whatever 
its professions may have been, the new aristocracy was 
moved rather by a lofty spirit of public service and a sense of 
noblesse oblige than by an unfaltering acceptance of demo- 
cratic dogma. Thus, while subscribing to the theory of 
manhood suffrage and of free, public education, Jefferson 
and his friends took no very energetic part in hastening their 
adoption. They did indeed introduce a more democratic 
spirit into the system provided for electing the president, by 
seeing to it that the presidential electors merely registered the 
will of the voters; but they deliberately ignored the oppor- 
tunity of dispensing with the electoral system in its entirety 
when they adopted the twelfth amendment (1804). 

On the other hand, the Jeffersonian aristocracy discarded 
much of the formalism and ostentation of the Federalist 
regime, and with it went the cynical contempt of the innate 
capacity of the people to govern themselves. ''Jeffersonian 
simplicity" became a byword and a rule of conduct. The 
new president refused to avail himself of the customary 
coach and four and walked quietly from his boarding-house 
to the capitol to take the oath of office. He dispensed with 
the official rules of etiquette, which Hamilton had drawn up, 
and introduced the custom of public receptions open to any- 
one who might wish to attend. The House of Representa- 



86 NEW VIEWPOINTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

tives granted better facilities for newspaper reporters; and 
the Senate began to hold public sessions and employed a 
stenographer to record its debates. 

Thus **J^fi^^rsonian democracy," as a term descriptive of 
American social ideals during the period from 1801 to the 
defeat of John Quincy Adams in 1828, meant no panacea for 
the people who had hitherto been excluded from the full 
enjoyment of the opportunities of American life. The mass 
of the white population in the East discovered little change 
for the better in their political and civil status although 
federal policy was molded chiefly with an eye to their good, 
and the abundance of good lands in the interior continued to 
insure their material well-being. However, in the northern 
half of the country, Hegro serfdom was being abolished by 
provisions for gradual emancipation; and in the Northwest, 
the foundations were being laid for a free elementary school 
system. 

IV 

This genial aristocracy was not long to hold its place 
unchallenged by the less fortunate classes. While its mem- 
bers were yet engaged in passing about the higher offices of 
the land among themselves, fundamental changes beneath 
the surface of American Hfe were beginning to undermine 
their position. In the West, the frontier states were dis- 
playing a hearty disrespect for the wisdom of their betters 
by granting universal white manhood suffrage and abolishing 
special qualifications for office-holding. In the newly- 
established factory centers of New England and the Middle 
states, the workingmen were rebelling against the hampering 
and unsanitary conditions under which they were obliged to 
labor, and were insistently demanding equal political rights 
and the establishment of a public school system. Everywhere 
immigrants from the Old World joined their voices in the 



DECLINE OF ARISTOCRACY IN AMERICA 87 

swelling chorus for the diminution of aristocratic privilege. 
A movement of irresistible momentum got under way for 
the extension of political rights to all white men regardless of 
their fitness or their property rating; so that by 1821, fifteen 
of the twenty- four commonwealths possessed white manhood 
suffrage, absolute or virtual. 

Confronted with the realistic results of Jefferson's theo- 
retical attachment to manhood suffrage, the fine old person- 
ages, many of whom had been young men when Jefferson 
entered the presidency, condemned and opposed with utmost 
bitterness the impending vulgarization of politics. Daniel 
Webster and Justice Story united with the venerable John 
Adams in resisting the change in Massachusetts. In New 
York the justly renowned Chancellor Kent declared to the 
state constitutional convention that "Universal suffrage 
jeopardizes property and puts it into the power of the poor 
and the profligate to control the affluent. Shall every de- 
partment of the government be at the disposal of those who 
are ignorant of the importance and nature of the right they 
are authorized to assume ? The poor man's interest is always 
in opposition to his duty, and it is too much to expect of 
human nature that interest will not be consulted." In Vir- 
ginia, the contest for equal political rights for white men 
was only partially successful (1830) because of the opposi- 
tion of John Marshall, James Madison and John Randolph, 
three ancient antagonists in politics who now made common 
cause for their order and succeeded in excluding fifty 
thousand white men from the franchise for a period of 
twenty years more. So stubborn in Rhode Island was the 
resistance of those who wished to maintain the status quo 
that, after twenty years of wrangling, Dorr's rebellion was 
necessary to effect a liberalization of the suffrage. 

The control of the federal government could not long 
remain in the accustomed hands when leveling tendencies 



88 NEW VIEWPOINTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

were sweeping aside the barriers of suffrage. Portents of 
the impending subversion were all too apparent to the 
decorous gentlemen of the age. Salmon P. Chase, then a 
young law student in Washington, relates that the bi-weekly 
levees of President John Quincy Adams were always 
crowded to excess, and that at the New Year's reception, 
1827, the guests became so unruly in their eagerness to 
secure refreshments that they pushed the attendant over. 
On the same occasion, a hat belonging to a Delaware Con- 
gressman was stolen, which caused Chase to remark lacon- 
ically: "Something of this kind almost always occurs and 
those who attend would do well to wear the poorest articles 
they have, that their value may not tempt the honesty of 
others." Even more disturbing to polite society at the capi- 
tal, so Chase reported, was the news that the brother-in-law 
of one of the president's sons had married his sister's serving- 
maid! 

The elevation of the backwoodsman Andrew Jackson to 
the presidency in 1829 was a dramatic symbol of the success 
of the disintegrating forces of the time. The men of qual- 
ity and wealth who had dominated the public service for so 
many years were left with no alternative but to execute as 
dignified a retreat as possible. "As they cannot occupy in 
public a position equivalent to what they hold in private 
life," observed the Frenchman, Alexis de Tocqueville, who 
visited America at this time, "they abandon the former, and 
give themselves up to the latter ; and they constitute a private 
society in the state, which has its own tastes and pleasures." 
The seats of the government became, for the first time, filled 
with men whom the people had elected, not because the 
officials were superior to the multitude but because they were 
so like them. The taint of aristocracy now became as defi- 
nite an obstacle to political preferment as a suspicion of 
democratic sympathies once had been. The fact that Martin 



DECLINE OF ARISTOCRACY IN AMERICA 89 

Van Buren used goldware and had installed a billiard-table 
in the White House was a serious campaign issue in 1840; 
and the object of every astute candidate was to convince the 
voters that he was only a plain and democratic citizen. 
Daniel Webster apologized publicly because he had not been 
born in a log-cabin but eagerly claimed that distinction for 
his elder brother and sisters. **If ever I am ashamed of it," 
he solemnly averred, "may my name and the name of my 
posterity be blotted from the memory of mankind !" 

The overthrow of the forces of aristocracy in the arena 
of politics was accompanied by attacks on their prerogative 
in other fields hitherto monopolized by them. It is extremely 
significant that all class distinctions in matters of dress dis- 
appeared at this time. All men began to wear the homely 
garb and short-cropped hair that had been the distinguishing 
mark of servants and day-laborers in colonial times. James 
Monroe had been the last president to affect the stately 
colonial costume; and in Connecticut it was observed that 
after the democratic victory in 1818 public officials ceased to 
wear the formal attire of earlier times. Elsewhere the 
courtly dress of colonial days had survived longer. 

The exclusive position of the aristocratic class was chal- 
lenged at another point : a concerted effort was made in the 
second quarter of the century to drag down education to the 
level of the crowd. The principle of free education sup- 
ported by public taxation had long been recognized in New 
England and the Northwest although the practice had fallen 
sadly short of the theory; but in the few other places where 
free schools were maintained, they were regarded as char- 
itable institutions for pauper children, the instruction offered 
being extremely rudimentary. The demand for equal edu- 
cation at the government's expense grew out of labor agita- 
tion in New York and Pennsylvania in the twenties and the 
thirties ; and it aroused the same feelings of disapproval and 



90 NEW VIEWPOINTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

indignation in the ranks of the aristocracy as did the agita- 
tion for manhood sufifrage. The National Gazette of Phila- 
delphia denounced the scheme as 'Virtually Agrarianism. It 
would be a compulsory application of the means of the richer 
for the direct use of the poorer classes ; and so far an arbi- 
trary division of property among them." The editor further 
pointed out that 'The peasant must labor during those hours 
of the day which his wealthy neighbor can give to abstract 
culture of his mind; otherwise, the earth would not yield 
enough for the subsistence of all : the mechanic cannot 
abandon the operations of his trade, for general studies ; if 
he should, most of the conveniences of life . . . would be 
wanting; languor, decay, poverty, discontent would soon be 
visible among all classes." 

But the tide of popular demand was not to be stemmed. 
By the decade of the forties, free public schools were com- 
mon throughout the North, and the notion that the common 
people needed merely the elements of education was aban- 
doned for the ideal of equal educational opportunities for all 
classes. Only in the South were the landed gentry success- 
ful in maintaining the monopoly of educational advantages 
that their wealth and social position assured to them. 

Notwithstanding the irreparable losses suffered by the 
aristocracy as a result of the upheavals from below, the caste 
idea founded sources of rejuvenation in certain other aspects 
of American development before the Civil War. On the 
broad basis of African slavery the southerners had already 
in colonial times perfected a semi-feudal order of exclusive 
manners comparable to the age-long aristocracies of Europe. 
The vast expansion of cotton culture from 1800 to 1830 
gave a new dignity and importance to this high-toned gentry. 
The few thousands of "first families," who lived upon the 
incomes of plantations and formed the upper-crust of 
southern society, spent their winters in New Orleans, their 



DECLINE OF ARISTOCRACY IN AMERICA 91 

springs in Charleston and their summers at the Virginia 
springs. Every gentleman had his valet, every lady her 
maid ; tutors were employed to train their children. The 
personal ideal of this aristocracy was summed up in the term 
"chivalry," an expression denoting the virtues of gallantry 
toward women, courtesy to inferiors, a mettlesome sense of 
honor, and a lavish hospitality. On all appropriate occa- 
sions the southerners openly declared the failure of demo- 
cratic government and were at one with the renowned 
Chancellor Harper of South Carolina in scorning the glitter- 
ing generalities of the Declaration of Independence. 

Forming the governing class of the South — for Jacksonian 
democracy had never disturbed their seats of power within 
the borders of their own states — they looked upon themselves 
as prepared by training, temperament and interest to guide 
the destinies of the federal government. Their cultivation 
of the arts of leisure gave them a decided advantage in the 
science of statecraft over the rough-and-ready political 
organizers of the North. Yet the circumstances of the 
times were such that no southern aristocrat could ever expect 
to occupy the presidency again ; and the planting class had to 
employ as their instruments in the presidency and many 
other high offices men of the democratic North whom they 
could in no measure accept as their social equals. Their 
direct personal participation was confined to membership in 
the House and the Senate and to various appointive offices. 

In the North at the same time a pretentious aristocracy 
was rapidly establishing itself socially, confined largely to the 
great cities of the Atlantic seaboard. Men of that section 
who had made money out of land speculation and the nascent 
manufacturing industries were beginning to coalesce into a 
special caste although as yet there were few millionaires to 
be found among their number outside of the Astors, the 
Girards and the Longworthys. Distinguished visitors in 



92 NEW VIEWPOINTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

America became aware of the growing importance of social 
distinctions. The English historian, Harriet Martineau, was 
told much about the "first people" of feoston, New York and 
Philadelphia when she visited the United States in the 
thirties; and in the last named city she discovered a sharp 
social cleavage between the ladies of Arch Street whose 
fathers had made their own fortunes and the social leaders 
of Chestnut Street who owed their wealth to their grand- 
fathers. Compared with the corresponding social class in 
the South, the upper stratum of northern society constituted 
an upstart aristocracy, based upon fluid capital rather than 
upon land, and destitute of traditions or culture or negro 
vassals. Contemned by the southern patricians as nouveaux 
riches, this aspiring group were destined to be the forerun- 
ners of the class that was to supplant the southern aristocracy 
in the period after the Civil War and become the modern 
conservators of the aristocratic tradition. 

Thus, by the middle of the nineteenth century, the well- 
born in America had lost their proprietorship of the govern- 
ment, they had in large degree lost their monopoly of educa- 
tion, and, finally, they had even lost their clothes. As if the 
cup of humiliation were not already running over, a new 
blow was being prepared for the subversion of the securely- 
established aristocracy of the South. The story is a familiar 
one and need not be retold here. The ownership of slaves 
was an unmistakable badge of social superiority and pre- 
sumably the pillar upon which southern wealth and culture 
rested. Chancellor Harper was but expressing the common 
opinion of the southern gentry when he declared that with- 
out slavery ''there can be no accumulation of property, no 
providence for the future, no tastes for comfort or elegancies, 
which are the characteristics and essentials of civilization," 
and that opposition to the institution came from men "whose 
precipitate and ignorant zeal would overturn the fundamental 



DECLINE OF ARISTOCRACY IN AMERICA 93 

institutions of society, uproar its peace and endanger its 
security, in pursuit of a distant and shadowy good . . . ." 
Therefore when the party of "precipitate and ignorant zeal" 
elected their candidate, Abraham Lincoln, president of the 
United States in i860, separation from such an unhallowed 
association seemed to be the only reasonable course to adopt. 
The Civil War dealt a body blow to the most exclusive 
aristocracy our country has ever known. The former mas- 
ter class issued from the conflict with the stigma of unsuc- 
cessful revolutionists; they had lost the flower of their 
manhood and most of their wealth ; they had lost their slaves 
and, for a space of time, their political equality in the Union. 
The slaves emerged from the conflict at first as freedmen 
possessing undefined rights, then as citizens with all the legal 
rights of whites, and quickly thereafter the male negroes 
were endowed with the right of suffrage. But the aristoc- 
racy of the old South, which had played so large a part in 
the history of the nation and had produced many of its 
greatest men, was annihilated, to live no more except as a 
splendid and romantic memory of the days "before the war." 



By 1870 the impartial historian must record that aristoc- 
racy in America appeared to have reached the nadir of its 
decline. The confident assurance of the Fathers of 1776 
that "all men are created equal" had at last become embodied 
in the law of the land, if by the word "men" were under- 
stood "males." The principle of equality had been intro- 
duced into political participation, into religion, into educa- 
tion, and into social relationships generally. The Home- 
stead Act of 1862 had opened the public lands upon more 
generous terms than ever before ; and hence political equality 
for men was coupled with a virtual equality of economic 
opportunity. The women formed the only element of the 



94 NEW VIEWPOINTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

population whose rights and privileges were distinctly in- 
ferior to those of the rest of the people. 

But devotees of the aristocratic tradition had no real occa- 
sion for despair. As a social institution, aristocracy has 
chameleon-like qualities and takes its color and form from 
each new situation in which it may find itself. Though 
individual aristocrats may lose prestige and position, the 
caste idea never fails to find new sources of sustenance. An 
era of dynamic development occurred in the United States 
following the Civil War, which manifested itself in every 
field of economic endeavor. The energetic captains of the 
new age found opportunities for the accumulation of wealth 
on every hand — in railway enterprises, in all sorts of manu- 
facturing enterprises, in unappropriated natural resources 
and public utilities, in stock manipulation. The epoch of 
colossal fortunes dawned upon the country ; and soon people 
began to speak of "coal barons," "steel kings," "railroad 
magnates," "cattle kings," and "Napoleons of finance." The 
master minds of the new order used their personal prestige 
and economic power to establish their control over the state 
and national governments. The political policies of the 
period from 1870 to 1900 were, in great degree, fashioned 
to augment and fortify the position of this new power in 
American life through tariffs, land grants, liberal charters 
and franchises, and a laissez faire attitude of the government. 

"It is useless for us to protest that we are demo- 
cratic . . . ," wrote Josiah Strong in 1885. "There is among 
us an aristocracy of recognized power, and that aristocracy is 
one of wealth. No heraldry offends our republican preju- 
dices. Our ensigns armorial are the trademark. Our laws 
and customs recognize no noble titles; but men can forego 
the husk of a title who possess the fat ears of power." The 
new aristocracy was dubbed by its critics as "the plutocracy" 
since its authority was based upon wealth rather than upon 



DECLINE OF ARISTOCRACY IN AMERICA 95 

the heritage of birth. Its exalted position was enhanced by 
the wide gulf dividing it from the great wage-earning class 
which made its appearance simultaneously with the rise of 
the new aristocracy. Nothing quite like this toiling class 
had been known in American history before either in num- 
bers or circumstances. The massing of immigrants on our 
shores, and the growing scarcity and eventual disappearance 
of free lands in the West, gave an unprecedented fierceness 
to the problem of making a living and tended to drive the 
workingmen onto a plane of living where life became a drab 
existence. For such men the forms of political democracy 
remained as before ; but the substantial equality of wealth 
and economic opportunity of the earlier days was fast dis- 
appearing. 

The finest spirits of the new aristocracy regarded them- 
selves as pioneers of a new kind, impelled by the creative 
fever in their blood to carry on the old work of developing 
the natural resources of the nation under modern conditions ; 
and they believed that the prosperity of the few would even- 
tually penetrate the nether strata of society. Arising out of 
the ranks of the people, the members of this new order 
lacked the culture and traditions and tastes of a long- 
established aristocracy — but they believed that all these re- 
finements might be bought for a price. Occupied themselves 
with the sterner realities of wealth-production, the men good- 
humoredly left to their womenfolk the responsibility of 
creating a fitting social atmosphere to gild the new order. 

To this end no stone was left unturned or dollar unspent. 
In the generation following the Civil War, playgrounds of 
the rich began to appear overnight along the Atlantic sea- 
board ; international marriages became the goal of ambitious 
mothers ; palatial mansions and liveried retinues were recog- 
nized as the accustomed symbols of the new superiority. As 
the first generation grew older and the second generation 



96 NEW VIEWPOINTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

began to come of age, the new regime began to feel its social 
position firmly established, its newness worn oflf; and its 
efforts at ostentation, though no less carefully sustained, 
became less frantic. Thus it happened that the second and 
the third generations were able to found a genuine leisure 
class with the prodigality and profligacy that attends such a 
mode of existence. Natural refinements began to grace the 
life of the ''exclusive set"; and with the development of a 
sense of rich esse oblige, men of wealth became the patrons 
of libraries, art galleries, scientific organizations, and impov- 
erished colleges. 

But the new order of things did not remain without oppo- 
sition from the less fortunate classes. To be sure, the social 
pre-eminence of the plutocracy could not, with any degree of 
effectiveness, be disputed or prevented, but the sources of 
its economic and political predominance presented vulnerable 
points of attack. Disgruntled groups of the plain people, 
farmers in the West and workingmen in the cities, began to 
make their voices heard in protest against what they called 
"SpeciaJ Privilege" and "Vested Interests," and to urge that 
the government use its power to demolish the foundations of 
the superstructure upon which Plutocracy rested. The 
monied aristocracy was no more inclined to yield to leveling 
tendencies than had been its prototypes in the earlier days 
of the republic. "This country has been developed by a 
wonderful people, flush with enthusiasm, imagination and 
speculation bent . . ." declared E. H. Harriman, the organ- 
izing genius of twenty thousand miles of railroad. "Stifle 
that enthusiasm, deaden that imagination and prohibit that 
speculation by restrictive and cramping conservative law, 
and you tend to produce a moribund and conservative people 
and country." In a more exalted strain George F. Baer, 
president of the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad, entered 
his classic defense of the ascendant class as "the Christian 



DECLINE OF ARISTOCRACY IN AMERICA 97 

men to whom God, in His infinite wisdom, has given the 
control of the property interests of the country." 

Meantime, the popular movement against plutocratic con- 
trol continued to gain in volume and volubility ; and by 1900 
the people generally were aroused to the point of taking swift 
and drastic measures. Since that time their chief energy has 
been directed toward restoring that equality of opportunity 
which had characterized the days of the undeveloped frontier 
and without which they regarded political democracy as 
devoid of meaning. Proposing to destroy the alliance of 
political bosses and the plutocracy, the popular leaders pre- 
vailed upon the state legislatures to pass corrupt practices 
laws, to establish systems of direct nominations and to insure 
popular sanction of legislation through the initiative and 
referendum. These measures were followed in 191 3 by the 
establishment of a new method of electing United States 
senators — by direct vote of the people. The impracticable 
and dangerous character of all these proposals were elo- 
quently portrayed by the men of wealth and position, but to 
no avail. The national government was also forced to yield 
to the popular clamor; and, in conjunction with the state 
governments, laws were passed to regulate the business prac- 
tices of railroads and industrial corporations, to conserve our 
natural resources, and to improve the conditions of the labor- 
ing class. The unequal distribution of wealth was another 
subject for legislation; and acts have been passed for im- 
posing graduated taxes on large incomes, inheritances and 
excess business profits. 

These laws, disconcerting and disrupting as they are in the 
judgment of the aristocracy, do not involve a complete 
annihilation of its special privileges, for many of these privi- 
leges were granted in terms and under circumstances that 
make their revocation an impossibility. The most funda- 
mental menace to the continuance of the privileged class 



98 NEW VIEWPOINTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

is found in the increasing self -consciousness and self- 
assertion of the laboring class. The great labor organiza- 
tions are seeking, by means of collective bargaining and the 
strike, to introduce the principles of political democracy into 
the management of industry. Their aspiration has received 
high sanction in a message of President Wilson, who declared 
on May 20, 1919, his endorsement of a ''genuine democrati- 
zation of industry based upon a full recognition of the right 
of those who work ... to participate in some organic way 
in every decision which directly affects their welfare or the 
part they are to play in industry." Should this tendency 
work out to its logical conclusion, industrial magnates will 
find themselves forced to yield control over their own busi- 
ness enterprises and be reduced to the status of partners, 
perhaps silent ones, with their own employees. A remoter 
peril is held forth in the equalitarian program of those radi- 
cal laborites who maintain that private profits should be 
abolished, and that all industry should be "socialized" with 
complete control in the hands of the workers. 

The warfare against aristocracy during the years since the 
Civil War concerned itself also with the inferior position 
which woman occupied in American society. The chief con- 
tenders for the abolition of artificial sex distinctions were 
members of the subordinate class ; and each decade saw new 
inroads made on the exclusive position held from time imme- 
morial by the male members of society. Susan B. Anthony, 
the great leader in the movement for sex equality, made the 
issue clear in 1873 when she said that, for women, ''this 
government is not a democracy. It is not a republic. It is 
an odious aristocracy. . . . Surely this oligarchy of sex, 
which makes the men of every household sovereigns, masters 
. . . can not be endured." The leaders of the privileged sex 
repeatedly pointed out the dangers which any lowering of the 



DECLINE OF ARISTOCRACY IN AMERICA 99 

sex barriers would involve — that woman would lose her 
charm and forfeit the respect of man, that equalization of the 
sexes would lead to the breaking-up of family life, that 
the feminine mentality was unfitted to cope with public 
questions. Behind these arguments lay the deep-seated con- 
viction of the men, so a member of the New York constitu- 
tional convention of 1867 averred, that "The right of self- 
government upon which our whole superstructure is based is 
in the man. It has been written by the finger of God him- 
self upon the mental constitution of every human being and 
in such unmistakable characters that it is impossible for us to 
misunderstand, misinterpret, or mistranslate them." The 
failure of women to be silenced by these arguments seemed 
to constitute added proof of their irrational and emotional 
nature. Nevertheless, sex bars fell one by one until finally, 
in 1920, the women of the nation were admitted as political 
partners with the men by an amendment to the federal Con- 
stitution. 

In this veracious chronicle of aristocracy in America, it 
would be unfair not to record one positive advance that the 
forces of privilege have made in recent years. The status of 
legal equality which, in a moment of high exaltation, had 
been thrust upon the southern negro by the federal govern- 
ment has been quietly disregarded by the superior race of 
that section ; and in the period since southern reconstruction, 
the negro has been reduced to a special plane of his own, des- 
titute of the vote, deprived of equal educational advantages 
and restrained by class discriminations from enjoying equal 
rights in public carriers and places of assemblage. 

In conclusion, it may fairly be asked : what lesson is to be 
learned from the history of aristocracy in the United States? 
Those who are protagonists of the democratic ideal may 



100 NEW VIEWPOINTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

draw their own moral. For them the fact of outstanding 
significance must doubtless be the steady advance and even- 
tual conquest of democracy over all forms and traditions of 
aristocracy. But, however impressive this thought may be, 
the confirmed aristocrat need not lose heart. He may always 
expect the common people to think with Thomas Jefferson 
that "the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles 
on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready 
to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God" ; but if his- 
tory has shown anything, it has demonstrated that the multi- 
tude tend to grow careless of their liberties and to think in 
terms of their own generation rather than with an eye to the 
future. New conditions and altered circumstances of society 
have, in the past, rendered possible the creation of new privi- 
leges and pretensions for those who were energetic and alert. 
In the shortcomings of democratic society, therefore, lies the 
hope of the future for the perpetuation of the aristocratic 
tradition in America. 

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 

The development and interrelations of aristocracy and democracy 
in the United States have since colonial times excited the intense 
interest of countless numl^rs of foreign travelers in this country. 
This is not surprising since the United States was for many years 
the great laboratory of democratic social and political experimenta- 
tion for the world. These foreign observers were not merely 
interested in democracy in the restricted sense of political self- 
government but also in its broader social manifestations. When 
due allowance is made for the motives which brought the travelers 
to our shores and for their social and political predispositions, this 
class of literature, distinguished by such names as the Marquis de 
Chastellux, Alexis de Tocqueville, Harriet Martineau, James Bryce 
and Edward A, Freeman, contains the most penetrating observations 
that may be found anywhere of the conflict of aristocratic and 
democratic ideas in American life at the various stages of our 
history. A useful index to this extensive literature for the period 
prior to the date of its publication is Henry T. Tuckerman's 
America and her Commentators (New York, 1864). 

Native Americans of the early days of the republic seldom viewed 
these contrasting institutions objectively or, if they did, it was with 
some ulterior political purpose in mind. Nevertheless, such essays 



DECLINE OF ARISTOCRACY IN AMERICA loi 

as the following, notwithstanding their polemic purpose, shed con- 
siderable light upon the contemporary conceptions of aristocracy and 
democracy in American history: John Adams's A Defence of the 
Constitutions of Government of the United States (1787-1788) and 
his Discourses on Davila (1790) ; John Taylor's An Enquiry into 
the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States 
(1814) ; and John C. Calhoun's A Disquisition on Government and 
his A Discourse on the Constitution and Government of the United 
States (published posthumously). C. Edward Merriam's A History 
of American Political Theories (New York, 1910) offers incidentally 
an excellent sketch of the growth of democratic ideals in the writ- 
ings of American statesmen and political philosophers. 

It was not until a quarter of a century ago that American 
students began to single out democracy as a theme for special 
study and treatment, although it is perhaps true to say that no 
history of the United States has ever been written which is not, 
however unconsciously and inadequately, a running commentary 
upon the expansion of political democracy. In 1898, three works 
appeared which were concerned with isolating the democratic trend 
in American history and studying it: Frederick A. Cleveland's 
The Growth of Democracy in the United States (Chicago), Francis 
Newton Thorpe's Constitutional History of the American People, 
1776-1850 (2 v., New York) ; and Bernard Moses's Democracy and 
Social Growth in the United States (New York). The first two 
of these works were occupied very largely in setting forth the 
enlargement of popular rights in government and law ; and since 
then a number of other studies have been carried out along the 
same lines, among which may be mentioned : J. Allen Smith's The 
Spirit of American Government (New York, 1907) ; Kirk H. 
Porter's A History of Suffrage in the United States (Chicago, 
1918) ; Dixon Ryan Fox's The Decline of Aristocracy in the Politics 
of New York (New York, 1919) ; and Andrew Cunningham 
McLaughlin's Steps in the Development of American Democracy 
(New York, 1920). The volume by Professor Moses paid relatively 
more attention to the social and economic conditions of democratic 
development; and this point of view has since then received fuller 
treatment in such studies as John Bach McMaster's The Acquisition 
of the Political, Social and Industrial Rights of Man in America^ 
(Cleveland, 1903) ; Frederick Jackson Turner's '"Contributions of 
the West to American Democracy" in the Atlantic Monthly, vol. xci 
(i903)> PP- 83-96, reprinted in his The Frontier in American His- 
tory (New York, 1920) ; Robert Tudor Hill's The Public Domain 
and Democracy (New York, 1910) ; and Frederick C. Howe's Privi- 
lege and Democracy in America (New York, 1910). 

An adequate history of aristocracy and democracy in America is 
yet to be written, for, as the foregoing sketch has indicated, these 
social ideals have been mirrored not only in government and politics 
but also in the manners and customs, religion and education, eco- 
nomic organization, literature and thought of the people. The 
materials for compiling a comprehensive account of the decline of 
aristocracy will be supplied only when a genuine social history of 



102 NEW VIEWPOINTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY, 

the United States is written. Important contributions toward such 
a history 'lave been made by a host of writers, among whom may 
be mentioned John Bach McMaster, Phihp A. Bruce, Alice M. Earle, 
Henry A^ams, E. D. Fite, William E. Dodd, Arthur W. Calhoun, 
John R. Commons, and the special writers on American religious 
history and the history of literature and education in the United 
States. A handy compendium is the book entitled Social and 
Economic Forces in American History (New York, 1913), composed 
of chapters selected from the volumes of The American Nation: a 
History (New York, 1905-1918). Very suggestive is Albert Bush- 
nell Hart's volume National Ideals Historically Traced (in The> 
American Nation': a History, vol. 26; New York, 1907). 



if 



CHAPTER V 

RADICALISM AND CONSERVATISM IN AMERICAN HISTORY 



The heated discussion conducted in recent years by press 
and platform on the merits and demerits of radicahsm and 
conservatism causes the student of American history to 
search his mind concerning the effects of these opposing 
types of thought on the past history of the United States. 
In such an inquiry, an initial difficulty presents itself : what 
do the terms, "conservative" and "radical," mean? Popular 
usage has tended to rob these expressions of exact meaning 
and to convert them into epithets of opprobrium and adula- 
tion which are used as the bias or interest of the person may 
dictate. The conservative, having mapped out the confines 
of truth to his own satisfaction, judges the depravity and 
errors of the radical by the extent of his departure from the 
boundaries thus established. Likewise the radical, from his 
vantage-point of truth, measures the knavery and infirmities 
of his opponents by the distance they have yet to travel to 
reach his goal. Neither conservative nor radical regards the 
other with judicial calm or "sweet reasonableness." Neither 
is willing to admit that the other has a useful function to 
perform in the progress of society. Each regards the other 
with deep feeling as the enemy of everything that is funda- 
mentally good in government and society. 

In seeking a workable definition of these terms, the philo- 
sophic insight of Thomas Jefferson is a beacon light to the 

103 



I04 NEW VIEWPOINTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

inquirer. When Jefferson withdrew from active poHtical 
life at the close of his presidency in 1809, he left behind him 
the heat and smoke of partisan strife and retired to a con- 
templative life on his Virginia estate, where his fellow- 
countrymen learned to revere him as the "Sage of Monti- 
cello." The voluminous correspondence of these twilight 
years of his life is full of instruction for the student of 
history and politics. His tremendous curiosity caused him 
to find an unfailing source of speculation in the proclivity 
of mankind to separate into contrasting schools of opinion. 
In one luminous passage, representative of the bent of his 
thought, he declared : "Men, according to their constitutions, 
and the circumstances in which they are placed, differ hon- 
estly in opinion. Some are Whigs, Liberals, Democrats, call 
them what you please. Others are Tories, Serviles, Aris- 
tocrats, etc. The latter fear the people, and wish to transfer 
all power to the higher classes of society ; the former consider 
the people as the safest depository of power in the last resort; 
they cherish them, therefore, and wish to leave in them all 
the powers to the exercise of which they are competent." 

In this passage Jefferson does not use the expressions 
"conservative" and "radical" — indeed, those words had no 
place in the American political vocabulary until Civil War 
times — but his penetrating analysis throws a flood of light on 
the significance of those terms nevertheless. The Tory who 
fears the people and the Whig who trusts them are equiva- 
lent to our own categories of "conservative" and "radical." 
Thus Jefferson finds the vital distinction between the two 
schools of opinion in their respective attitudes toward popu- 
lar government. 

But before accepting Jefferson's classification as correct, 
what shall we do with the common notion that the conserva- 
tive is a person who opposes change and that the ear-mark of 
the radical is his liking for innovation? This does not seem 



RADICALISM AND CONSERVATISM 105 

to be a fundamental distinction. If a difference of opinion 
concerning the need of change were the basic difference 
between the two, then Americans who advocate a limitation 
of the suffrage to male property-owners may properly be 
regarded as radicals, for they advocate an alteration in the 
established order; and French patriots of today opposing the 
re-establishment of the Orleanist monarchy are to be classed 
as conservatives, for they would keep things unchanged. 
Few people would be willing to follow the logic of their 
premises to such conclusions. On the other hand, it cannot 
be denied that history has generally shown the radical in the 
role of an active proponent of change and has cast the con- 
servative for the part of the stalwart defender of things as 
they are. Is such evidence to be dismissed as a coincidence 
oft-repeated, or has there been behind the actions of both 
radical and conservative some self-interested purpose which 
has determined their respective attitudes toward the estab- 
lished order ? 

~>^ x^'^he very question perhaps suggests the answer. Broadly 

speaking, all history has been an intermittent contest on the 
part of the more numerous section of society to wrest power 
and privilege from the minority which had hitherto possessed 
it. The group which at any period favored broader popular 
rights and liberties was therefore likely to find itself as a con- 
tender for the new and untried, leaving to its antagonists the 
comfortable repute of being the conservators of the status 
quo and the foes of change. -But, though the historical 
conditions influenced the character of the contest, such 
conditions were, after all, merely the stage setting of the 
struggle. Advocacy of change should, under such circum- 
stances, be regarded merely as the means employed to attain 
an end and, in no sense, as an end in itself. Recurring now 
to Jefferson's definition, the goal sought by each group — 
whether it be in the direction of greater or less democracy — 



io6 NEW VIEWPOINTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

would appear to constitute the real difference between the 
two. 

/ It should be clear, then, that the radical is a person who, in 
contrast to the conservative, favors a larger participation of 
the people in the control of government and society and in 
the benefits accruing from such control. To attain his ideal 
the radical may become a protagonist of change; he usually 
has been one, as a matter of history, but this fact is a mere 
incident to, and not the touchstone of, his radicalism. The 
temperament of the radical is sanguine. He can say with 
Jefferson : "I steer my bark with Hope in the head, leaving 
Fear astern. My hopes, indeed, sometimes fail; but not 
oftener than the forebodings of the gloomy." The conserva- 
tive, on the other hand, is skeptical of the capacity of the 
mass of the people to protect their own mterests intelli- 
gently; and believing that social progress in the past has 
always come from the leadership of wealth and ability, he is 
the consistent opponent of the unsettling plans of the radical. 
If the old saw is true that a pessimist is the wife of an opti- 
mist, perhaps the cynicism of the conservative is amply 
accounted for by his enforced association with the radical. 
The radical regards himself as a man of vision; but the 
conservative sees him only as a visionary. I The radical as a 
type is likely to be broad-minded and shallow-minded; t^e 
disinterested conservative is inclined to be high-minded and 
narrow-minded. 

Of course, the expressions "radical" and "conservative" 
are relative terms, for at any given time the lines are drawn 
by the opposing forces upon the basis of the circumstances 
then existing. It is a truism that the radical of today may 
become the conservative of tomorrow. This does not neces- 
sarily argue inconsistency. It may indicate rather that, when 
the specific measures which the radical has advocated have 
been adopted, he believes that the supreme aim of public 
policy has been attained and he becomes a defender of the 



RADICALISM AND CONSERVATISM 107 

new status quo against any further extensions of popular 
rights. This is perhaps the same as saying that the con- 
servative of today, had he held the same opinions on political 
and social questions a generation ago, would have been looked 
upon then as a radical. The movement of history has been 
from radicalism to conservatism so far as the attitude of 
individuals is concerned, but from conservatism to radical- 
ism so far as the trend of public policy is concerned. 

Not only are the terms relative in the sense just indicated, 
but they are comparative as applied to variations of opinion 
that exist within each school of thought. In the conserva- 
tive camp are to be found different degrees of distrust of 
popular rule, varying from the purblind reactionaries on the 
extreme right to the moderates on the extreme left. Simi- 
larly the radical camp has its subdivisions, comprising all 
grades of confidence in popular government from a left wing 
of ultra-radicals to a wing at the opposite extreme composed 
of progressives or liberals. The apostles of lawlessness — 
those who would accomplish their ends through a defiance of, 
or assault on, the law — are to be found in the exterior wings 
of both camps. In this sense the reactionaries who seek to 
gain their purposes through the corruption or intimidation of 
the courts are to be regarded as much the enemies of law 
and order as the followers of Daniel Shays in 1786 when 
they tried to disperse the courts with violence. On the other 
hand, the moderates of the conservative camp tend to frater- 
nize with the liberals of the radical camp without, however, 
completely merging their identity because of deep-grained 
prepossessions and habits of thought. It is in this middle 
zone or "No Man's Land" between the camps that there 
occurs the only true meeting of minds; and in democratic 
countries, advances can be made, under legal forms and 
proper safeguards, only through the temporary union of 
these groups for common purposes. 

No attempt need be made here to idealize or glorify either 



io8 NEW VIEWPOINTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

the radical or the conservative. Adherents of each are con- 
stantly engaged in constructing traditions which would 
ascribe superhuman attributes to the great leaders and 
spokesmen of their respective schools of opinion in the past. 
In this myth-making process the radicals inevitably suffer a 
serious handicap, for the audacious reformer of a century 
ago is likely to appear today as a man of orthodox ideas, and 
latter-day conservatives, without any appreciation of the 
earlier clash of ideas, are likely to claim him as their very 
own. For example, the average American citizen who values 
property rights as superior to human rights easily imagines 
himself in the forefront of the riot that led to the Boston 
Massacre, for through the mellow haze of time he forgets 
the real character of that street brawl with its raucous mob 
of blatant, missile-hurling roughs and half breeds.^ 

Whatever may be said in praise of either the conservative 
or the radical, both find themselves in bad company, for each 
makes his appeal to some of the basest as well as to some of 
the most ennobling qualities of human nature. The thinking 
conservative finds his chief allies in the self-complacency of 
comfortable mediocrity, in the apathy and stupidity of the 
toil-worn multitudes, and in the aggressive self-interest of 
the privileged classes. All those who dread uncertainty 
either because of timidity or from conventional-mindedness 
or for fear of material loss are enlisted under the conserva- 
tive standard. The honest radical draws much of his sup- 
Xport from self-seeking demagogues and reckless experiment- 
ers, from people who want the world changed because they 
cannot get along in it as it is, from poseurs and dilettanti, 
and from malcontents who love disturbance for its own sake. 
The two schools have more in common than either would 
admit; both have their doctrinaires and dogmatists; both 

^ The reader, of a conservative turn of mind, should not fail to read A. P. 
Peabody's article, "Boston Mobs before the Revolution" in the Atlantic Monthly, 
vol. Ixii, pp. 321-233. 



RADICALISM AND CONSERVATISM 109 

tend toward a stiffening of intellectual creeds ; and who can 
deny' that each has its share of mental defectives and the 
criminal-minded ? 

II 

There are special reasons why radical thought and aspira- 
tion should have attained fertile growth in American soil. 
From our earliest history a process of social selection has 
been going on which has served to separate the radical from 
the conservative elements of the population and has given to 
the former unique opportunities for impressing their philos- 
ophy upon the population in general. As Professor Van 
Tyne has pointed out in a notable passage, the tendency of 
colonization was to stock the American colonies with radicals 
and dissenters and to leave behind in England the conserva- 
tives and conformists, thereby rendering inevitable sharp 
contrasts in temperament and outlook between the colonists 
and the mother country. This process has repeated itself 
with endless variation in the later history of our country. 
The incoming tides of foreign immigration have deposited 
upon our shores many of the restless and rebellious spirits 
of the Old World civilizations. The periodic flow of west- 
ward settlement in this country has tended to carry the 
adventurous and the discontented forward into new lands of 
opportunity, leaving the older settlements to the control of 
timid and conservative people. Thus the radical spirit has 
constantly been fed and refreshed by contributions from 
abroad ; and in our own land the processes of social integra- 
tion have tended to segregate the radical-minded geograph- 
ically and to permit them to develop without the restraining 
influences of a long-established conservative class. 

Under such favoring circumstances radicalism might have 
been expected to attain its most extreme expression in 
America. The result, however, has been neither a reign of 



no NEW VIEWPOINTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

overbearing individualism nor the establishment of a co- 
operative commonwealth, although both forms of social 
organization had their advocates and were given sporadic 
trial. The acquisition of property on easy terms in the 
newer parts of the country made the settlers quickly forget 
the bitter injustices and oppressions of the older civilizations 
and, without sapping their interest in democratic progress, 
gave them a personal stake in the orderly advance of the 
community. Indeed, the very freedom which they enjoyed 
to experiment as they wished with their own lives and prop- 
erty exercised a moderating influence on their conduct. So 
it has happened that, while progress along liberal lines has 
been rapid in the newer parts of America, it has been accom- 
plished through the acts of legislatures and the amending of 
constitutions. In the older sections such advances have been 
made slowly and have often been attended by severe political 
struggles, sometimes culminating in armed conflict, as in the 
case of the Dorr Rebellion in Rhode Island in 1842-1843. 

It is not surprising that, as a result of this continuing 
process of social differentiation, one of the outstanding char- 
acteristics of American national development should be the 
constant interest of the people in movements for democratic 
and humanitarian reform. Every movement of radical ten- 
dency has developed through certain clearly-defined stages, 
as if in obedience to some immutable law of social dynamics. 
These phases can generally be reduced to three. At the out- 
set there occurs a period of violent propaganda conducted by 
a small group of agitators. These pioneers resort to pic- 
turesque and sensational methods of propaganda in order to 
awaken the apathetic public to the presence of evil condi- 
tions and the need for change. They constitute a flying 
wedge of protest and moral indignation. The late ex- 
President Roosevelt referred to this vanguard when he de- 
clared in his autobiography: "Every reform movement has 



RADICALISM AND CONSERVATISM iii 

a lunatic fringe." It is indeed a *'lunatic fringe," in the 
sense that these trumpeters of reform act irrationally accord- 
ing to the standards of the majority of the people, and must 
expect to suffer their ridicule or ostracism or persecution. 
In this advanced group may ordinarily be found the "soap- 
boxer," the "muckraker," the idealist, the doctrinaire, the 
fanatic, the would-be revolutionist and, at times even in 
American history, the martyr. These agitators, irrespective 
of individual peculiarities, share a bitter disregard of exist- 
ing public opinion, a passion for destructive criticism, and an 
emotional conviction that in their proposal is to be found a 
panacea for human ills. 

Some movements never advance beyond this first ultra- 
radical stage, for they fail to gain converts outside of the 
group immediately engaged in furthering the cause. The 
second stage arrives when the pioneer reformers succeed in 
arousing interest and approval among the. soberer elements 
of the population. The ideas long regarded as "queer" or 
"dangerous" are now on the point of gaining the sanction of 
respectability; and the assurance of a growing popular favor 
enlists the support of some of the experienced leaders of the 
people — the "practical statesmen." These men possess the 
constructive ability, the organizing genius and the knowledge 
of political strategy which are necessary in order to carry 
into execution the ideas of the agitators. Less agile of 
imagination and frequently less pure of purpose, they know 
better the temper and limitations of the average man; and 
under their direction the new policies and doctrines, perhaps 
in modified form, become the law of the land. Thus the 
actual achievers of the reform are the liberals or progres- 
sives, aided perhaps by those moderates of the conservative 
camp who favor the proposed change as the best preventive 
of more basic changes. If, as sometimes happens, some of 
the abler leaders of the first period survive into the second 



112 NEW VIEWPOINTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

and are placed in positions of power by a surge of popular 
feeling, they usually become sobered and moderated by 
responsibility and experience, and their conduct is scarcely 
.distinguishable from that of the practical statesmen. 
"^^ The third and final stage of the reform is reached when 
the new doctrines, having lost their air of strangeness and 
demonstrated either their utility or harmlessness, become 
imbedded in the conscience and philosophy of the people at 
large. The public becomes adjusted to practices and policies 
that were altogether unacceptable a few years earlier ; indeed 
most of the people have already forgotten that these reforms 
were not always a part of the commonly accepted stock of 
ideas. The cycle of reform has about completed itself ; for 
public opinion hardens into a new conservatism and forms a 
crust that toughly resists any further efforts for change. 
Advocates for new advances must employ the militant and 
fantastic methods which mark the "lunatic fringe" of a new 
crusade for reform. 

Ill 

Examples of reform movements abound in American his- 
tory. These have been multifarious in their objects and 
reflect the diversified interests and social outlook of the ages 
in which they flourished. Some of the most significant of 
these enterprises have been concerned with improving the lot 
of the average man or the condition of society's wards — the 
dependent and the criminal. From many points of view 
such movements would appear to merit more careful study 
by the youth in our schools than most reforms of a purely 
political type; but, the anti-slavery movement excepted, re- 
formative movements of a humanitarian character receive 
little or no attention in the orthodox histories. Yet what 
thoughtful American can deny the superb courage and in- 
estimable service of the men and women (unknown to most 
of us) whose efforts made possible religious liberty, free 



RADICALISM AND CONSERVATISM 113 

public education, scientific care of the deaf, the dumb and 
the blind, a more humane criminal code, the abolition of child 
labor, reformative treatment of criminals, statutory reduc- 
tion of the workday, governmental protection of the public 
health, and the abolition of the saloon? 

The reforming activities of political parties and party 
factions are better known. Jefferson advanced the proposi- 
tion that a people should never pass legislation binding for a 
period longer than the lifetime of their own generation, for, 
as conditions change, men change, and every fresh genera- 
tion should have a free opportunity to fashion its own laws 
and constitutions according to its special circumstances. 
Using certain tables compiled by M. de Buffon, he went so 
far as to fix the average duration of a generation at nineteen 
years. Looking back over the annals of the United States, 
we can see that the course of our national development has, 
in a large degree, mirrored the changing needs and interests 
of the procession of generations. From one point of view, 
American history may be regarded as a succession of eager 
new generations ruthlessly elbowing aside older and effete 
generations; and although lacking the automatic modes of 
expression that Jefferson would have provided, each fresh 
accession of leadership has wrought a transformation of 
party creeds, and represented new policies, practices and 
ethical conceptions, better adapted to the changed economic 
and social conditions of the time. It is scarcely necessary 
to set forth the history of each of these generations in detail, 
for the results of their labors are recorded in the achieve- 
ments of the nation. Each fresh generation experienced the 
usual difficulties of a group advocating unaccustomed ideas ; 
and the following sketch should yield, among other things, 
many illustrations of. the familiar cycle by which novel ideas 
become acceptable maxims of policy and then are conse- 
crated as the truisms of statesmen. 

Without going back into the period of our colonial begin- 



114 NEW VIEWPOINTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

nings, it is plain to see that the Declaration of Independence 
signalized the accession of the first generation to power in 
our national history. No spirit of decrepit age or feeble 
counsel stalked through the scintillant passages of that im- 
mortal document. Strong medicine though it was for the 
American subjects of George III, their minds had been 
prepared for the event by a long period of violent propa- 
ganda conducted by such skilled masters of the art as James 
Otis, Patrick Henry, Samuel Adams, Alexander McDougall, 
Charles Thomson, Christopher Gadsden and Tom Paine. 
The methods of these patriot-agitators were thoroughly 
demagogic and sensational, characterized by unlawful assem- 
blages and mob violence as well as by legislative memorials 
and pamphleteering of unusual merit; and gradually they 
succeeded in arousing the colonial population to a realization 
of the injustices which they decried. They sought radical 
reform, for it was their object to destroy the autocratic 
power of the British king and to establish in America an 
untried form of government based upon the principle of 
popular rule. 

Due to the unusual conditions existing in a country torn 
by revolutionary conflict, the influence of the original agi- 
tators continued beyond the time when their chief usefulness 
had expired. Independence proclaimed, the task fell to 
them of establishing a federal government for the thirteen 
new-fledged states, a task demanding constructive genius of 
a high order. Their effort at a solution, offered in the form 
of the Articles of Confederation, precipitated the ''Critical 
Period" of American history and revealed the poverty of 
their organizing ability. Under the circumstances they were 
compelled to surrender leadership not to a new generation 
but to a different element of their own generation — to men 
who thought less in terms of theories and emotions, and 
more in terms of realities, men who did not despise bargain 



RADICALISM AND CONSERVATISM 115 

and compromise if they might thereby gain the end they 
had in view. The accession of these men inaugurated a 
period of conservative reaction. Hamilton, John Adams, 
Washington, John Jay and their Federalist associates ac- 
cepted the liberal philosophy of their predecessors with 
mental reservations ; but they brought about the adoption of 
the Constitution and created under it a national government 
which not only worked successfully at the time but which 
stands today as one of the oldest continuous constitutional 
governments in the world. 

When the Federalists were yet at the height of their 
power, the sappers and miners of a new age were passion- 
ately devoting their energies to the subversion of the existing 
regime. Led by such men as Jefferson, Madison, Aaron 
Burr, William Duane, Thomas Callender and Philip Freneau, 
the object of these crusaders was radical reform. They 
wished to replace what they considered to be a centralized 
government of pseudo-monarchical tendencies with a truly 
republican government based upon the principle of decen- 
tralization of authority. The presidential election of 1800 
brought the new leaders into control, and Jefferson's inaugu- 
ration may be regarded as the beginning of the second gen- 
eration of American statesmanship. The new rulers con- 
sisted in part of the abler figures among the group of agi- 
tators ; and the leaders of the supplanted generation formed 
the dwindling nucleus of an intransigeant opposition. Jeffer- 
son and his successors in the presidency, Madison and 
Monroe, were sobered by the responsibility of holding office 
and found themselves forced to modify in practice many 
views that had seemed unassailable in speculation. Not- 
withstanding a flabbiness of administration characteristic of 
a liberal government in power, the Jeffersonian Republicans 
succeeded in proving the practicability of liberal principles as 
the guide of public policy. 



ii6 NEW VIEWPOINTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

While the Jeffersonian Republicans were still holding the 
seats of authority, a growing discontent against their control 
began to find expression under the skillful direction of a 
younger generation of leaders aspiring for power. The 
pacifistic foreign policy of the elder statesmen in face of the 
aggressions of England and France furnished the issue upon 
which the new group succeeded in attaining national promi- 
nence. Henry Clay, John C. Calhoun, Richard M. Johnson, 
Felix Grundy, Langdon Cheves, Peter B. Porter and other 
"War Hawks" entered Congress in 1811 and plunged the 
nation into an unprofitable war contrary to the best judg- 
ment of many of the seasoned statesmen of the time. By 
the close of the war, the new generation had formulated 
their plan of legislative reform and were definitely in com- 
mand of the situation, although their measures were looked 
on askance by Madison and Monroe and bitterly opposed by 
Daniel Webster, a young man of the new age still lingering 
under the influence of the discredited Federalist leadership. 
Their program of legislation, presented to Congress in 1816- 
181 7, was essentially conservative in its tendency, containing 
as its main features a protective tariff, a new and greater 
United States Bank, the construction of internal improve- 
ments at national expense, and adequate military prepared- 
ness. Before they yielded to the onrush of the next genera- 
tion most of these reforms had been passed into federal 
statutes; indeed, their chief policies gained such general 
acceptance that party lines disappeared entirely about 1820. 

Shortly thereafter began the inevitable agitation which 
presaged the accession of a new generation to the control of 
public policy. The forerunners of the new leadership raised 
their voices in protest against the political philosophy that 
controlled the times — the right of the well-born to rule — 
rather than against any specific measures which the dominant 
group had enacted. The first attempt at revolt resulted in 



RADICALISM AND CONSERVATISM 117 

the indecisive election of 1824; but thereafter a veritable hue 
and cry was raised against the Adams-Clay administration 
and all their works and doctrines, and the forces of discon- 
tent became well organized under the direction of such men 
as William B. Lewis, Thomas H. Benton, Amos Kendall, 
Duff Green and Martin Van Buren. The inauguration of 
Andrew Jackson in 1829 marked the entrance of the new 
political generation, the fourth in order of succession, into 
command of the government. The practical statesmen of 
the new order were Jackson himself, Thomas H. Benton and 
Martin Van Buren, each of whom, in his own way, embodied 
the liberal ideals of the new time. Their principles called for 
increased control of the common people in all departments of 
government and politics ; or, in other words, for the abolition 
of special privilege in appointments to office, in the federal 
banking system (the United States Bank), in internal im- 
provements, and in the disposition of western lands. Before 
they were retired from power, the Jacksonian Democrats 
succeeded in translating their doctrines into governmental 
practice though challenged at every turn by the brilliant and 
versatile opposition of the leaders whom they had supplanted. 
Many of the details of their program were modified by later 
generations, but the basic principles of government which 
they established are to this day accepted as the foundations 
of the American democratic structure. 

While the generation of Jackson was still strongly en- 
trenched in power, the portents that foretold the oncoming 
of a new statesmanship were beginning to display themselves 
in the political heavens. The heralds of the coming era were 
deeply convinced that the pivotal issue in national affairs 
was one which the elder leaders had carefully ignored and 
evaded — the slavery question. To a consideration of this 
issue the new generation brought all the energy and arrogant 
assurance with which fresh generations have always ap- 



ii8 NEW VIEWPOINTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

proached weighty problems of public policy. Unfortunately 
for the orderly evolution of national institutions, the new 
leadership brought conflicting viewpoints to bear upon the 
great problem of the time, one portion of the new statesmen 
hailing from the South and the other portion from the free 
states of the North. The great conflict of the new era was 
not, as so often before, a contest between a superannuated 
statesmanship and the buoyant, resistless vanguard of a new 
leadership, but a struggle between men of the same genera- 
tion, equally sure of themselves, equally determined to attain 
dominance and establish their policies in governmental 
practice. 

With the accession of John Tyler to the presidency in 
1 84 1 the new generation assumed direction of the govern- 
ment with the conservative pro-slavery contingent in the 
ascendant, a position which they succeeded in retaining for 
nearly twenty years. From the outset they had to contend 
with the ceaseless and growing agitation of the abolitionists, 
led by such men as Garrison, Giddings, Wendell Phillips, 
Gerrit Smith and John Greenleaf Whittier; and all their 
guile and power availed them nothing against zealots who 
were inspired only to greater effort by "gag resolutions" and 
mob attacks. Nevertheless the mass of the people were 
slow to accept the teachings of the abolitionists; and in the 
meantime the conservative ideas of the pro-slavery group 
were in large part carried into force. Under the skillful 
guidance of men like James K. Polk, Jefferson Davis, 
Stephen A. Douglas and Alexander H. Stephens, half of the 
Republic of Mexico was annexed, the federal territories 
were opened to slavery, and a stricter fugitive slave law was 
enacted. 

But gradually the anti-slavery agitation began to bear 
fruit. Leadership in the movement, originally held by ultra- 
radical abolitionists like Garrison and Phillips, passed to 



RADICALISM AND CONSERVATISM 119 

anti-slavery liberals like Chase and Seward and Lincoln. 
The propaganda of emotionalism was succeeded by appeals 
to reason and organized political activity culminating in the 
Republican party. Division within the ranks of the Demo- 
cratic leaders early in i860 gave the anti-slavery forces their 
opportunity; and in the presidential election of that year 
they elected their candidate Abraham Lincoln to the presi- 
dency on a platform pledging the party to the non-extension 
of slavery. The southerners believed that behind this mod- 
erate program lay the uncompromising purposes of men like 
Garrison and John Brown ; and they chose to shift any sub- 
sequent controversy from legislative halls to the battlefield. 
The processes of orderly social growth are always un- 
settled by military conflict ; and in the case of the Civil War 
the high passions aroused by the struggle made it possible 
for the anti-slavery radicals to gain ascendency in Congress 
although under other circumstances their period of influence 
would have expired when the anti-slavery cause was taken 
up by the practical statesmen. Such men as Thaddeus 
Stevens, Charles Sumner and Ben Wade gloried in the name 
Radical as distinguished from Conservative or Administra- 
tion Republican ; and under their propulsion, abolition meas- 
ures of increasing severity were enacted by Congress, and 
the president was given no peace until he had issued the 
Emancipation Proclamation. When victory crowned the 
Union arms, the task fell to the Radicals, unsuited to their 
genius, of reconstructing the South ; and this they undertook 
with the same energy and singleness of purpose with which 
they had fought the war. Applying their doctrinaire pre- 
conceptions to the solution of the iHegro problem, they raised 
the slaves to the level of white citizens and conferred upon 
the black men the right to vote. But by these last measures 
the generation had over-reached itself in its radicalism; re- 
forms enacted under such auspices and at such a juncture 



120 NEW VIEWPOINTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

were not likely to be enduring in effect. Although the 
changes were solemnly embodied in the federal Constitution 
in the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments, they were so far 
in advance of public opinion that to this day they remain a 
dead letter so far as the great majority of the negroes are 
concerned. 

The reconstruction statesmen began rapidly to pass away 
early in the seventies as if burnt out by the very intensity of 
their zeal, and their places were soon taken by new men 
whose minds dwelt on matters far removed from the ideal- 
istic and humanitarian interests of the earlier period. The 
new leaders were concerned primarily with the economic and 
industrial exploitation of the nation's resources and with 
governmental policies that would assist material development 
at every turn. Under their direction the energies of the 
government were, in the sixth generation of American poli- 
tics, turned to conservative purposes — to land-grants for 
railroads, the protective tariff system, "sound money" finance 
and a policy of non-interference in the methods and manage- 
ment of industry. Men like Roscoe Conkling, Blaine, Gar- 
field, Levi P. Morton, Samuel J. Randall and **Czar" Reed 
came into charge of public affairs. Even such spokesmen as 
Schurz, Curtis and Cleveland, whose voices were raised in 
protest against some of the more obnoxious practices of the 
dominant leadership, did not differ fundamentally from them 
in their conception of the functions of government. While 
this generation was in power, the United States made the 
transition to the modern era and the foundations were laid 
for the stupendous business development of the present time. 

The note of dissent was early sounded against the domi- 
nation of the government by the great corporate interests; 
but the protestants were for many years in a hopeless minor- 
ity. They spent their energies, with little effect, in launch- 
ing radical minor parties and in organizing radical agrarian 



RADICALISM AND CONSERVATISM 121 

and workingman associations. In the decade of the nineties 
the movement of protest against the existing order reached 
threatening proportions in the Populist movement and the 
"free silver" campaign of 1896. In the opening years of 
the new century the work of propaganda was taken up with 
missionary zeal by the "muckrakers," a group of publicists 
and writers whose object it was to inflame public opinion 
against corruption and abuses in government and *'big 
business." 

On the crest of the wave of popular resentment thus 
raised up, the leaders of the new generation came into 
power, the seventh political generation since the natal days 
of the republic. Unlike the elder leaders, the new statesmen 
were animated with liberal ideals ; without regard to party 
affiliations they labored for "progressive" legislation and 
strove for the advent of a "new democracy." Under the 
inspiration of such men as Bryan, Roosevelt, Wilson, La 
Follette, Hughes and Hiram Johnson, they brought about the 
enactment of laws for the restraint of trusts, railroads, land- 
grabbing corporations and the financial interests; the work- 
ing conditions of employees were greatly improved by the 
enactment of a wide variety of welfare legislation; and an 
effort was made to rejuvenate the power of the people in 
governmental affairs through direct nominations and direct 
legislation, the granting of woman suffrage and the popular 
election of senators. The new measures were carried 
through in face of the embittered opposition of the survivors 
of the departed epoch. 

When the United States entered the World War in 191 7, 
the signs of the times indicated that the generation had about 
run its course. Its program of domestic reform had been 
enacted ; Roosevelt passed away in 1919, Wilson, La Follette 
and other vigorous reformers of an earlier day were begin- 
ning to show signs of physical decline ; the adoption of fed- 



122 NEW VIEWPOINTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

eral suffrage for women suggested a point of departure for 
a new era. An unceasing criticism directed against the 
foundations of the existing order had been conducted by the 
Socialists and other radical groups and was apparently pre- 
paring the way for the transfer of power to fresh hands. 
New and lively issues were already looming up which had 
received little serious consideration by those in power, ques- 
tions concerned with the application of democratic principles 
to industrial organization and with the relations of the 
United States to the world order. A leadership representa- 
tive of the new day seemed slow in making its appearance, 
and the presidential campaign of 1920 showed the country in 
a condition of drift awaiting the coming of new pilots. 
Future events alone can supply the confirmatory evidence to 
show whether, as at present seems likely, we are today 
standing on the threshold of the eighth generation of Ameri- 
can statesmanship. 

IV 

For confirmed radicals and orthodox conservatives this 
survey of the successive generations of American history 
will serve merely to reinforce their preconceptions as to the 
importance of their respective theories of progress to na- 
tional development. The one group will find in the evidence 
sufficient reason for maintaining that the American people 
would have fared better if statesmen of the Jeffersonian 
school had always been at the helm. The other will discover 
justification for the conviction that the nation made its chief 
advances under the guidance of statesmen of the Hamiltonian 
school. The former group will be likely to stress the 
dynamic quality of democratic and humanitarian ideals as 
the motive force of national progress. The latter will point 
to administrative efficiency and the stimulation of economic 
enterprise as supplying the chief impulse to national 
achievement. 



RADICALISM AND CONSERVATISM 123 

But to the candid student of social tendencies it is not 
likely that either conclusion will prove wholly acceptable. 
Beyond question the foregoing review yields two generali- 
zations which would seem to be pregnant with significance. 
In the first place, epochs of radicalism and conservatism have 
followed each other in alternating order ; and, secondly, with 
the changing of epochs, leadership in public affairs has 
passed from -the liberals of the one division to the moderates 
of the other and vice versa, except in times of war and after- 
war readjustment when the extremists of the one group or 
the other have ordinarily been in the saddle. Whatever 
fallacies or losses may be apparent to the logician in such a 
zigzag scheme of progress, it nevertheless remains that in 
America social development has never followed a straight 
line, but, within limits, has been the result of the uncon- 
scious employment by the people of the trial-and-error 
method. Experimentation and opportunism, rather than 
preconceived theories, have been the animating spirit of 
American progress. 

To the working out of this vital social process, both the 
radical and the conservative have made important and essen- 
tial contributions. Their mutual criticism and vigilant 
antagonism have served to keep America abreast the most 
enlightened nations of the world without the periodic re- 
course to revolutionary violence characteristic of continental 
European countries. The functioning of these crosscurrents 
and countercurrents of opinion has been made possible by 
the solemn guarantees, in the state and federal constitutions, 
of free speech and a free press. If the experience of the 
past is a dependable guide to the future, the best assurance of 
the peaceful and orderly advance of the people in the future 
would seem to lie in a jealous regard for the right of free 
exchanges and comparisons of opinion. 

In conclusion, this survey of the procession of generations 
suggests a criterion for analyzing the elusive quality of 



124 NEW VIEWPOINTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

greatness, which by general consent attaches to certain char- 
acters in American history. Restricting our inquiry to the 
incumbents of the presidency, a consensus of opinion among 
historians and publicists ascribes preeminence to Washing- 
ton, Jefferson, Jackson and Lincoln, and, in a preliminary 
way, to Roosevelt and Wilson. But what were the tests and 
standards that were applied in making this selection? It is 
not to be denied that this group of foremost presidents dif- 
fered from each other in many conventional respects — in 
education, temperament, training, personality, party affilia- 
tion, and attachment to specific public policies. Further- 
more, Washington as president was swayed by conservative 
ideals whereas the other presidents were exponents of the 
doctrines of liberalism as understood by the men of their own 
generation. Evidently their title to fame is not derived 
from any of the aptitudes or qualities that have been noted. 
The answer to our query has perhaps been reached by this 
process of elimination. These statesmen enjoyed one attri- 
bute, and one only, in common: they were men of elastic 
mind, sensitive to the quickening impulses of a new time, 
swift to grasp a fresh vision of public duty and to present 
their solution in a form capable of rallying public, opinion to 
its support. Their ability to marshal the energies of the 
nation to meet the new situation assured them of their his- 
toric position among the great leaders of the nation. Thus 
the essence of greatness, as viewed in the perspective of 
history, does not consist in the ability to hold back or even 
to mark time but in the capacity for adaptability to change, 
in the quality of leading the nation to the acceptance of new 
responsibilities and larger opportunities. 

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 

No comprehensive study of the historical significance of radical- 
ism and conservatism in the United States has ever been made. 
There is real need for such a study, for, in the mind of the average 



RADICALISM AND CONSERVATISM 125 

man, the whole subject has been obscured by a cloud of misinfor- 
mation and misrepresentation growing out of the political animosi- 
ties of the last twenty years. 

It is possible to find occasional passages, in the writings of pub- 
licists and historians, which discuss in an instructive way the mean- 
ing of radicalism and conservatism and of the various shades of 
opinion existing within each school, as well as the relation of these 
tj-pes of opinion to social and institutional development. Among 
the more luminous of such discussions, selected somewhat at ran- 
dom, may be cited: John Dewey's "How Reaction Helps" in the 
New Republic, vol. xxiv, pp. 21-22; A. V, Dicey's "An English View 
of American Conservatism" in Gustav Pollak's Fifty Years of 
American Idealism. The New York Nation, 1865-1915 (Boston, 
I9i5)» PP- 309-324; Guy Emerson's essay "What Is a Liberal?" in 
his The New Frontier (New York, 1920) ; Ralph Waldo Emerson's 
"The Conservative" in his Complete Works (12 v.; New York, 
n. d.), vol. i, pp. 279-307; Henry Jones Ford's "Radicalism in Ameri- 
can Politics" in the Yale Review, vol. ix, pp. 759-770; editorial 
entitled "In the Vein of Intimacy" in the Freeman, March 31, 1920; 
William J. Kirby's "The Natural History of a Reform Law" in the 
Catholic World, vol. 102, pp. 145-159; W. E. H. Lecky's A History 
of England in the Eighteenth Century (8 v.; New York, 1892-1893), 
vol. i, pp. 16-19, vol. ii, pp. 95-97; Walter Lippman's A Preface to 
Politics (New York, 1913), pp. 86-105, and his Drift and Mastery 
(New York, 1914), chaps, ix, xii-xiv, xvi; Brander Matthews' essay 
on "Reform and Reformers" in The American of the Future (New 
York, 1909) ; John Morley's On Compromise (London, 1896), pp. 
201-265; James Harvey Robinson's The Mind in the Making (New 
York, 1921), passim; E. A. Ross's Social Control (New 
York, 1901), chap, xv; Bertrand Russell's "Individual Liberty and 
Public Control'^ in the Atlantic Monthly, vol. cxx, pp. 1 12-120; 
Mowry Saben's "Conservatism and Reform" in the Forum, vol. 48, 
PP- 35-44; Thorstein Veblen's The Theory of the Leisure Class 
(New York, 1915), p. 190 et seq. The foregoing discussions con- 
sider the subject from widely differing angles and do not agree in 
many respects with the point of view presented by the present 
writer. The Cyclopedia of American Government (3 v. edited by 
Andrew Cunningham McLaughlin and Albert Bushnell Hart; New 
York, 1913), which was intended to codify contemporary specialized 
thought in political science and American history, does not include 
radicalism or conservatism among the subjects for treatment. 



CHAPTER VI 

THE ROLE OF WOMEN IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

An examination of the standard histories of the United 
States and of the history textbooks in use in our schools 
raises the pertinent question whether women have ever made 
any contributions to American national progress that are 
worthy of record. If the silence of the historians is taken to 
mean anything, it would appear th^ one-half of our popula- 
tion have been negligible factors in our country's history. 

Before accepting the truth of this assumption, the facts of 
our history need to be raked over from a new point of view. 
It should not be forgotten that all of our great historians 
have been men and were likely therefore to be influenced by 
a sex interpretation of history all the more potent because 
unconscious. Furthermore, while it is indisputable that the 
commanding positions in politics, diplomacy, and the army 
have always been held by men, it is also true that our ideas of 
what is important in our past have greatly changed in recent 
years. 

If, as the following sketch seeks to show, the women of 
the nation have played their full part in American develop- 
ment, the pall of silence which historians have allowed to rest 
over their services and achievements may possibly constitute 
the chief reason why the women have been so slow in gain- 
ing equal rights with the men in this the greatest democracy 
in the world. The men of the nation have, perhaps not 
unnaturally, felt disinclined to endow with equality a class 
of persons who, so far as they knew, had never proved their 

126 



ROLE OF WOMEN IN AMERICAN HISTORY 127 

fitness for public service and leadership in the past history of 
the country. Any consideration of woman's part in Ameri- 
can history must include the protracted struggle of the sex 
for larger rights and opportunities, a story that in itself is 
one of the noblest chapters in the history of American 
democracy. 



Although a queen as well as a king gave encouragement to 
Christopher Columbus and it was under another queen that 
the first English settlements in America were projected, 
colonization in the New World was not an unmixed blessing 
for the women settlers. It was theirs to share the hardships 
and perils of wilderness l^fe in equal part with the men, but 
to them came little of the glory and none of the legal advan- 
tages which the men derived by fleeing from the Old World. 
In 1920 Europe and America joined in celebrating the three- 
hundredth anniversary of the voyage of the Mayflower. The 
courage and achievements of the Pilgrim Fathers were com- 
memorated in detail; but very little was said about the 
Pilgrim Mothers, who formed thirty-two of the one hundred 
and twenty passengers but whose names were not permitted 
to appear on the civil compact which was signed by the 
settlers upon their arrival at Provincetown. 

For the great majority of colonial women, life was much 
as former President Eliot has described it : ^'Generations of 
them cooked, carried water, washed and made clothes, bore 
children in lonely peril, and tried to bring them up safely 
through all sorts of physical exposure without medical or 
surgical help, lived themselves in terror of savages, in terror 
of the wilderness, and under the burden of a sad and cruel 
creed, and sank at last into nameless graves, without any 
vision of the grateful days when millions of their descend- 
ants should rise up and call them blessed." 



128 NEW VIEWPOINTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

The rapid increase of the colonial population was due, in 
great part, to the large families which the women brought 
into the world. The generosity of nature in a sparsely popu- 
lated country removed any economic barrier to the rearing 
of a large number of children. Even in the upper levels of 
society girls often married when they were fifteen or sixteen; 
and to be without a husband at twenty-five was the certain 
sign of an "ancient maid." John Marshall, the later chief 
justice, fell in love with his wife when she was fourteen and 
married her at sixteen. From early marriages ordinarily 
came families of ten and twelve children. Anne Hutchinson 
was the mother of fifteen children. Sir William Phipps was 
one of twenty-six children by the same mother. Most of the 
large families were the offspring of at least two mothers, 
a fact that requires no further comment. 

Women were sometimes to'be found in business in a small 
way. This came about ordinarily as a result of the death of 
the husband or other provider. Advertisements in the 
colonial press show a wide range of such employments — 
shop-keeping, jelly-making, wax- working, embroidering, and 
the like. Benjamin Franklin's sister-in-law followed a 
familiar custom of widows in taking over her husband's 
newspaper business upon his death. But in general the 
sphere in which women might move was severely restricted 
and jealously guarded by the men of the age, who cherished 
the Old World idea of women as inferior beings. Now and 
then a woman sought to violate this convention only to be 
met by the contumely or persecution of the dominant sex. 
In 1638 Mistress Anne Hutchinson was brought to trial for 
sedition and heresy in Puritan Massachusetts because she 
had instructed the women of the neighborhood in religious 
precepts according to her own understanding. She was 
excommunicated from the church and banished from the 
colony, for she had committed two unpardonable sins: she 



ROLE OF WOMEN IN AMERICAN HISTORY 129 

had criticised the teachings of the men in authority, and she 
had set herself up to preach, the latter being forbidden by 
the solemn injunction of St. Paul. When she and her house- 
hold were murdered by the Indians a few years later, John 
Winthrop, first governor of Massachusetts, wrote piously: 
"God's hand is the more apparently seen therein, to pick out 
this woful woman to make her and those belonging to her, an 
unheard of heavy example of their cruelty." It was not 
vouchsafed him to understand that she had taken up the 
weapons where the Puritans had laid them down to do her 
part in the long battle for freedom of thought and speech, 
for religious toleration and for a true democracy in religion. 
Anne Hutchinson's experience was significant of the 
special ban under which women were compelled to live by 
law and custom during colonial times and, indeed, for many 
years thereafter. The principles of the English common 
law followed the colonists to America, fixed the legal restric- 
tions and colored the social restraints which regulated 
woman's conduct. The unmarried woman was in most 
respects equal to a man in the eyes of the law, but custom 
and economic pressure forced her to marry at an early age 
and matrimony reduced her to a subordinate and cramped 
position. She was expected to embrace her husband's re- 
Hgion, to confine her activities to the home, and to make 
her husband's pleasure her guiding star. By the law her 
husband became her baron or lord and she ceased to have 
a separate existence to most intents and purposes. She lost 
the title to all her personal property, even though it had been 
acquired before her marriage, and she forfeited all personal 
control over her real property as long as the marriage lasted. 
If a wife earned money outside the home, the husband was 
entitled to her wages just as he was to those of a minor 
child. He had the right of controlling and punishing her 
conduct in the same degree as he did his children. The 



130 NEW VIEWPOINTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

mother had no right to the custody of her own children, for 
the father was the sole guardian during his lifetime and 
could dispose of the children by will at his death. Con- 
versely the husband was held responsible for many of the 
torts and crimes committed by his wife, and was entitled to 
collect damages for injuries inflicted upon his wife. 

Under the circumstances it is not surprising that women 
were not expected to be educated and that ordinarily the 
obstacles in the way of their education were so great that 
most women could neither read nor write. Even such 
superior women as Mercy Warren, the sister of James Otis, 
and Abigail Adams, the spouse of John Adams, felt handi- 
capped by the lack of early educational advantages. The 
few girls' schools of the time were limited to terms of a few 
months each, and the main subjects taught were needlework, 
music, dancing, and the cultivation of manners and morals. 
Women were practically unknown as participants in govern- 
ment, although it appears that some of them possessed the 
franchise for a period of years in colonial Massachusetts. 

Notwithstanding these restraints and handicaps the mass 
of women were not discontented; and whenever occasion 
arose, they performed their full share with the men in the 
promotion of the public weal. Their labors were then 
greeted with masculine applause, for it was only when they 
worked for objects apart from the men or contrary to their 
immediate interests that they were regarded as unsexed and 
hideous to the dispassionate gaze. In the critical years pre- 
ceding the War for Independence the women threw them- 
selves heart and soul into the struggle for liberty, stimulating 
their men folks and supplementing their efforts. At the time 
of the Stamp Act women in all the colonies banded together 
in societies for the making of homespun; and in Rhode 
Island the maidens solemnly resolved that they would not 
receive the addresses of any suitors who favored the Stamp 



ROLE OF WOMEN IN AMERICAN HISTORY 131 

Act. In later crises they formed anti-tea leagues and agreed 
to abstain from the use of imported fineries. Newspapers 
owned by women in Rhode Island, Maryland, Virginia and 
South Carolina went the whole distance with the other patriot 
papers in promoting radical propaganda. When a patriot 
convention of men in North Carolina adopted comprehensive 
regulations of non-importation, non-consumption and non- 
exportation in 1774, the ladies of Edenton signed an agree- 
ment declaring: "It is a duty that we owe not only to our 
near and dear relations and connexions but to ourselves, who 
are essentially interested in their welfare, to do everything 
as far as lies in our power to testify our sincere adherence 
to the same." 

The spirit of such women is excellently reflected by a letter 
written shortly before the Declaration of Independence by 
a Philadelphia lady to a friend in the army: "1 have re- 
trenched every superfluous expense in my table and family; 
tea I have not drunk since last Christmas nor bought a new 
cap or gown since your defeat at Lexington; and what I 
never did before have learned to knit and am now making 
stockings of American wool for my servants ; and this way 
do I throw in my mite to the public good. I know this — 
that as free I can die but once; but as a slave I shall not 
be worthy of life. I have the pleasure to assure you that 
these are the sentiments of all my sister Americans." 

But the Declaration of Independence when it was adopted 
opened no new vistas to women as a sex. The statement 
that "all men are created equal" was understood in a strictly 
sex sense. Indeed, Abigail Adams, the stout-hearted spouse 
of John Adams, wrote to her husband, then in the Conti- 
nental Congress : "I cannot say, that I think you are very 
generous to the ladies ; for, whilst you are proclaiming peace 
and good-will to men, emancipating all nations, you insist 
upon retaining an absolute power over wives. But you must 



132 NEW VIEWPOINTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

remember, ..." she added with humorous asperity, "we 
have it in our power, not only to free ourselves, but to subdue 
our masters, and, without violence, throw both your natural 
and legal authority at our feet." 

In the War for Independence that ensued the women 
made sacrifices and contributed services that were as essential 
to the success of the cause as the exploits of the soldiers in 
the field. They tilled the farms and garnered the crops while 
the men were away ; they made munitions, using their pewter 
ware for bullets; they spun and wove and made uniforms 
and hospital supplies. Some gave their own property, others 
went from house to house to solicit contributions for the 
army. They carried supplies to the army, often at the risk 
of their own lives ; they visited hospitals and prisons, seeking 
to relieve suffering and distress. Some even served in the 
ranks. The possibilities of organized feminine effort in 
relief work were for the first time shown in 1780 by the 
labors of the women of Philadelphia under the direction of 
Esther De Berdt Reed and Sarah Franklin Bache. Their 
object was to supply the destitute soldiers with clothing; and 
by dint of their eflforts $7,500 in specie was collected for the 
purchase of materials. Throughout the war the women per- 
formed their work without any thought of recognition or 
reward; and when the days of peace finally returned, they 
quietly sank back in their places and took up the old endless 
routine of their existence. 

II 

The epic story of the westward march of population is 
usually related in terms of men; but no proper conception 
of the subjugation of the wilderness by the forces of civiliza* 
tion can be gained without an appreciation of the part that 
the women pioneers played. Women were not among the 
first adventurers into the wilds; they were preceded by the 



RCLE OF WOMEN IN AMERICAN HISTORY 133 

trappers, prospectors and cattle rangers. These soldiers of 
fortune introduced an unfettered and lawless mode of exist- 
ence. Wherever they went saloons and gambling houses 
flourished; shooting affrays and lynchings were common 
occurrences. But as the frontier grew older, farmers began 
to appear with their womenkind, animated with the purpose 
of founding permanent homes. The West of Bret Harte 
began to give way to the West of Hamlin Garland. The 
presence of women necessitated a new order of society; 
civilized conduct began to take the place of frontier rowdyism 
and lawlessness, and peaceful and law-abiding communities 
developed. 

The material conditions of early colonial life were repro- 
duced with each new advance of the frontier to the west. 
It was necessary for every man, woman and child to work 
to help support the family. The women not only did the 
hard housework, including spinning and weaving, but most 
of them also assisted their husbands to erect the cabins, till 
the fields, and beat off attacks of the savage enemy. On 
them also devolved the entire task of educating the children. 
Large families were the rule. As one writer has said, the 
woman pioneer "was lonesome until she had a half-dozen 
children about her. She did not begin to feel crowded in 
the single room until the second dozen began coming." The 
frontier women were a picked lot physically ; otherwise they 
could not have withstood the rigors of life in an undeveloped 
country. 

While women were faring forth with their men folk to a 
precarious life on the frontier, many of their sisters who 
remained in the East found the conditions of their life 
fundamentally altered through no act of their own. In 
New England and the Middle Atlantic states women were 
beginning for the first time to enter factory work in the 
years following the War of 1812. The growth of textile 



134 NEW VIEWPOINTS IN AMERICAN HISTOxlY 

manufacturing had created a demand for wage labor; and 
in order not to interfere with hired help on the farm, the 
mill owners looked to the women as an important source of 
labor supply. With our modern ideas of such things it is 
a surprising fact that many years before both Washington 
and Hamilton had anticipated such a culmination, and had 
expressed their full approval of the employment of women 
and children in factories. The working day of both women 
and children, like that of the men, extended from sunrise to 
sunset ; and wages were miserably low. Generally speaking, 
women and girls formed from two-thirds to three- fourths 
of the total number of factory workers in the first half of 
the nineteenth century, and in some places as much as nine- 
tenths. Without their help it is doubtful whether the textile 
industry could have flourished, for it was not until after 1850 
that cheap labor became plentiful in the form of European 
immigrants. 

When women stepped from the spinning wheel at home 
to the spinning jenny in the mill, they did not enter a new 
field of work, although they were working under radically 
changed conditions. The break once made, new occupations 
and trades opened to them because of the cheapness of their 
hire. By 1840 women were employed in more than one 
hundred different occupations, although the great majority 
of the women outside of the factories worked as seamstresses 
and tailoresses, and teaching was the only field open to 
educated women. The age-long idea of the family, accord- 
ing to which the interests of the mother and children were 
restricted to the home, was thus in process of being under- 
mined. Notwithstanding the miserable and discriminatory 
conditions under which women were obliged to work, the 
day of woman's economic independence of man was begin- 
ning to dawn. 

In most other respects the position of women in the first 



ROLE OF WOMEN IN AMERICAN HISTORY 135 

half of the nineteenth century remained as of yore. Catherine 
E. Beecher, sister of Henry Ward Beecher, writing about 
1840, voiced the dominant opinion of the age when she wrote: 
** Heaven has appointed to one sex the superior, and to the 
other the subordinate, station. ... It is therefore as much 
for the dignity as it is for the interest of females, in all 
respects to conform to the duties of this relation. And it 
is as much a duty as it is for the child to fulfill similar rela- 
tions to parents, or subjects to rulers." Or as Miss Barber 
put it in the Madison (Georgia) Visitor: **It is written in 
the volume of inspiration as plainly as if traced in sunbeams, 
that man, the creature of God's own image, is superior to 
woman. ..." Thus the legal status of women yielded but 
slowly to change, and the feminine intellect was hardly more 
esteemed than in colonial times. Such educational facilities 
as were afforded in the early decades of the century were 
meager, and the purpose of "female education" was to pre- 
pare the pupils to attract men and gain husbands. As an 
exception to the rule Emma Willard founded a seminary with 
government aid in New York in 1819 and sought to direct 
the education of women along more self-respecting lines. 
The usual experience was that of Susan B. Anthony, whose 
teachers would not instruct her in long division nor under- 
stand why a girl should insist upon wanting to learn it* 
Periodicals for women began to make their appearance, most 
of them edited by men. Their type is well illustrated by 
the most popular of them all, Godey's Lady's Book, filled 
with fashion pictures and stories of saccharine morality. 

Notwithstanding the condition in which the mass of 
women found themselves, or rather because of this fact, the 
first organized movement for women's rights had its rise in 
this period. The courageous souls who inaugurated the 
movement had not merely to brave the fierce contempt of the 
men as well as most of their own sex but they stood in 



136 NEW VIEWPOINTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

constant peril of physical violence at the hands of infuriated 
mobs. The battle of Anne Hutchison for the right to speak 
her mind in public had to be fought all over again. As 
Miss Ida Tarbell has said, "they had to fight for the right 
of fighting wrongs"; and St. Paul's dictum was again and 
again thundered at them from pulpit and press: "But I 
suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over 
the man, but to be in silence" (I Timothy, ii, 12). It was 
the penchant of women for humanitarian reform, their in- 
terest in the cause of oppressed humanity, that launched them 
upon their long and stormy voyage for sex equality. The 
temperance question — which first aroused the reforming zeal 
of Susan B. Anthony — the transcendentalist movement, labor 
welfare, and, above all, the anti-slavery agitation, derived 
indispensable support from an earnest, self-sacrificing minor- 
ity of women in all parts of the country. 

The first impulse to this new phase of feminine activity 
was given by the visit of the Scotchwoman Frances Wright 
to this country in 1820. A girl of twenty-two, she had the 
distinction of being the first woman lecturer on lay subjects 
in this country. Her advanced ideas on slavery, theology 
and woman's rights gave offense to both press and ministry, 
but did not prevent her from returning to America several 
years later and giving new momentum to the cause of human 
betterment. In 1828 came the Grimke sisters from South 
Carolina, who after having emancipated their slaves betook 
themselves north to devote the remainder of their lives and 
wealth to the cause of abolition. About the same time 
Lucretia Mott, a Quaker of Philadelphia, began her active 
work in the promotion of anti-slavery, woman's rights and 
the other reforms of the time. 

When the American Anti-Slavery Society was founded in 
Philadelphia in 1833 under the inspiration of William Lloyd 
Garrison, women took part in the meeting although they 



ROLE OF WOMEN IN AMERICAN HISTORY 137 

were not formally received as members. Immediately there- 
after the women of the city formed the Philadelphia Female 
Anti-Slavery Society; and so successful did the organization 
prove to be that a few years later the first national convention 
of American anti-slavery women was held in New York City. 
By this time women in many parts of the North were taking 
active part in the anti-slavery struggle through circulating 
petitions, holding prayer meetings and conventions, and 
raising large sums of money by fairs. An effort was made 
to stem the tide by a pastoral letter issued by the Massachu- 
setts Association of Congregational Ministers in 1837, which 
declared that "perplexed and agitating subjects" should not 
be forced upon any church and that the new practices 
threatened "the female character with widespread and per- 
manent injury. ... If the vine . . . thinks to assume the 
independent and overshadowing nature of the elm, it will 
not only cease to bear fruit, but fall in shame and dishonor 
into the dust." When the second convention of the women 
was being held in Philadelphia in 1838, the hall in which they 
met was surrounded all day by an enraged mob, and when 
the convention adjourned for the evening the building was 
plundered and burnt. The following year the women asked 
equality with the men in the American Anti-Slavery Society ; 
but this request caused such a violent controversy among the 
masculine friends of^egro rights that the society split, one 
wing led by Garrison merging with the women and the other 
organizing a new society. 

In 1840 occurred an event which called dramatic attention 
to the unequal position of women and led directly to the 
organization of a militant woman's rights movement. A 
World's Anti-Slavery Convention was held in London, to 
which delegates had been invited from all anti-slavery 
societies. When several American women, duly accredited 
as delegates, sought admission, they were excluded by a large 



138 NEW VIEWPOINTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

vote on account of their sex. This affront caused two of 
the delegates, Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, to 
resolve that on their return to America they would leave no 
stone unturned to remove all distinctions between the sexes. 
Several years passed before they were ready to launch their 
movement. Finally in 1848 they joined with Martha C. 
Wright and Mary Ann McClintock in issuing a call for a 
woman's rights convention, the first of its kind in the history 
of the world. 

The meeting was held on July 19, 1848, at Seneca Falls, 
New York, and was counted a complete success by all who 
attended. Its concrete outcome was an impressive declara- 
tion of sentiments patterned closely upon the Declaration of 
Independence. It read in part as follows: 

When in the course of human events it becomes neces- 
sary for one portion of the family of man to assume among 
the people of the earth a position different from that which 
they have hitherto occupied, ... a decent respect to the 
opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the 
causes that impel them to such a course. 

We hold these truths to be self-evident : that all men and 
women are created equal; that they are endowed by their 
Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these 
are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. . . . When- 
ever any form of government becomes destructive of these 
ends, it is the right of those who suffer from it to refuse 
allegiance to it. . . . 

The history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries 
and usurpations on the part of man toward woman, having 
in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny 
over her. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid 
world. 

He has never permitted her to exercise her inalienable 
right to the elective franchise. 

He has compelled her to submit to laws, in the formation 
of which she had no voice. . . . 

He has made her, if married, in the eye of the law, 
civilly dead. 



ROLE OF WOMEN IN AMERICAN HISTORY 139 

In the covenant of marriage, she is compelled to promise 
obedience to her husband, he becoming to all intents and 
purposes her master-^the law giving him power to deprive 
her of her liberty, and to administer chastisement. . . . 

He has monopolized nearly all the profitable employ- 
ments. . . . 

He has denied her the facilities for obtaining a thorough 
education, all colleges being closed against her. . . . 

He has created a false public sentiment by giving to the 
world a different code of morals for men and women. . . . 

He has usurped the prerogative of Jehovah himself, claim- 
ing it as his right to assign her a sphere of action, when 
that belongs to her conscience and to her God. 

He has endeavored, in every way that he could, to destroy 
her confidence in her own powers, to lessen her self-respect, 
and to make her willing to lead a dependent and abject life. 

Now, in view of this entire disfranchisement of one-half 
the people of this country, their social and religious degra- 
dation, ... we insist that they have immediate admission 
to all the rights and privileges which belong to them as 
citizens of the United States. . . . 

The success of this first experimental meeting caused 
woman^s rights conventions to be of almost yearly occur- 
rence until the outbreak of the Civil War, when the leaders 
merged all lesser interests in the national cause. Contem- 
porary opinion of these "Tomfoolery Conventions" is 
picturesquely expressed in the following editorial from the 
Syracuse Daily Star: "The poor creatures who take part in 
the silly rant of 'brawling women' and Aunt Nancy men, 
are most of them 'ismizers' of the rankest stamp, Abolition- 
ists of the most frantic and contemptible kind, and Christian 
(?) sympathizers with such heretics as Wm. Lloyd Garrison, 
Parker Pillsbury, C. C. Burleigh, and S. S. Foster. These 
men are all Woman's Righters, and preachers of such dam- 
nable doctrines and accursed heresies, as would make demons 
of the pit shudder to hear." 

The ridicule and vituperation of the press and pulpit 
seemed merely to spur the leaders to greater endeavors 



140 NEW VIEWPOINTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

although it undoubtedly prevented thousands of less confi- 
dent members of the sex from declaring their allegiance to 
the movement. Many prominent men lent their support. 
The great anti-slavery agitators, Garrison and Wendell 
Phillips, spoke at their meetings; Ralph Waldo Emerson, 
John Greenleaf Whittier and Horace Greeley wrote and 
lectured in their behalf. Far in the West Abraham Lincoln 
approved the principle of sharing the government with those 
who bore its burdens, "by no means excluding the women." 
The three decades of feminine self-assertion closing in 
1850 had not been without effect in bettering the condition 
of women as a sex. However reluctantly the new gospel 
was received, gradual but certain improvements in the legal 
and social position of women began to appear in various 
parts of the country. In 1839 Mississippi granted to married 
women the control of their own property; and in the next 
decade similar laws were passed in Texas, Indiana, Pennsyl- 
vania, New York, California and Wisconsin. In 1836 the 
first woman's seminary of college rank, Mt. Holyoke, was 
opened at South Hadley by Mary Lyon. The project of co- 
education was an even more daring venture, but in 1833 
Oberlin College was founded and from the outset admitted 
men and women on equal terms. Twenty years later the 
second co-educational college, Antioch, was opened by 
Horace Mann at Yellowsprings, near Xenia, Ohio. When 
the State University of Iowa opened its doors in 1855, it 
set a bold example for other state universities by admitting 
women to its first classes ; but three years later when several 
young women applied for admission to the University of 
Michigan, their request was refused. 

/ 

In the exciting decade preceding the Civil War the influ- 
ence of women continued to be felt in all forward-looking 



ROLE OF WOMEN IN AMERICAN HISTORY 141 

movements. It was during these years that Dorothea Dix 
performed her great work in securing the reorganization and 
proper construction of asylums for the insane. Her services 
were epoch-making in the history of pubHc philanthropy, 
especially in the West and the South, but s\\e met with one 
tragic disappointment when in 1854 President Pierce vetoed 
a bill she had finally induced Congress to pass, granting ten 
million acres of public land for the purpose of aiding the 
states to care for the insane. In New York state the women 
formed secret societies called the Daughters of Temperance, 
and some zealous individuals took the law into their own 
hands, visiting saloons, breaking windows and emptying 
whiskey barrels into the street. 

Women were now emboldened to rnake their initial appear- 
ance in the professions. The first wornan to receive a 
diploma in medicine after completing the regular college 
course was Elizabeth Blackwell, who attained that distinction 
in Geneva, New York, in 1848. Six years later she founded 
the New York Infirmary, the first adequate woman's medical 
institution. The ministry was not entirely a new calling for 
women, for certain sects such as the Quakers and the Shakers 
had always permitted women preachers; but the first regu- 
larly ordained woman in the United States was Mrs. Antoi- 
nette Brown Blackwell of the Congregational Church, who 
began her life work in 1852. Women were as yet unknown 
in the legal profession; but in the literary field they were 
more at home. Catherine Sedgwick, the novelist, Alice and 
Phoebe Cary, the poets, and Margaret Fuller, brilliant 
journalist and founder of the Dial magazine, were all familiar 
household names in the middle of the century. 

The slavery question inevitably overshadowed all other 
interests of the time, and to this cause public-spirited women 
gave their chief attention. In 1852 Harriet Beecher Stowe 
published her great propagandist novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin, 



142 NEW VIEWPOINTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

which in the next few years stirred the North to its depths. 
Women speakers in the North took an active part in en- 
kindling pubHc indignation over the Kansas-Nebraska Act 
in 1854; and when the Republican party was born out of 
the intense feeling of the time, women stimulated the men 
to active participation in the new party. Then occurred the 
Civil War and the energies of the women were for four 
terrible years turned to other purposes. 

The story of the Civil War without an account of the 
part borne by the women in the struggle is a story but partly 
told and but poorly comprehended. Women became a part 
of the war machine quite as fully as the men, contributing 
services almost as indispensable to national success as the 
troops in the field. Organized relief work, attempted by 
the women of Philadelphia on a small scale during the 
Revolutionary War, was now developed to a high degree of 
perfection, a harbinger of what the women of America were 
to accomplish through even abler organization in the World 
War. A few days after the surrender of Fort Sumter the 
leading women of New York City met at Cooper Union 
and under the inspiration of Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell formed 
the Woman's Central Relief Association of New York. At 
the solicitation of this body the United States government 
was shortly thereafter induced to authorize the establishment 
of the so-called United States Sanitary Commission, charged 
with the duty of sustaining the morale and protecting the 
health of men in the camps, and of aiding in the care of the 
sick and wounded. 

The work of this organization, the counterpart of our 
modern American Red Cross (established in 1882), was 
made possible largely through the exertions of the women. 
In nearly every community of the North, Soldiers' Aid So- 
cieties were formed, in which the women met together, 
scraped lint and rolled bandages, made clothing for the 



ROLE OF WOMEN IN AMERICAN HISTORY 143 

soldiers, and collected supplies and food for transmission to 
the nearest depot of the Sanitary Commission. The Chicago 
branch of the Sanitary Commission had one thousand aid 
societies constantly sending in money and supplies ; five hun- 
dred societies united in supporting the Cleveland and Cincin- 
nati branches. A suggestive description of the activities of 
such organizations is presented by the final report of the 
Wisconsin Soldiers' Aid Society: Six thousand packages 
were dispatched; gifts amounting to $200,000 collected. 
Bureaus were organized for getting state pay for the families 
of soldiers, for securing pensions and arrears, for obtaining 
employment for the wives and mothers of volunteers, for 
securing work for men partially disabled in the war, and for 
supplying the wants of those who had been permanently 
crippled in the service. 

Perhaps no feature of the war was more remarkable than 
the series of Sanitary Fairs held in the large cities of the 
North in the final years of the war. Probably more than 
seven million dollars had been laboriously raised by the Sani- 
tary Commission by a variety of means prior to Gettysburg. 
Shortly thereafter the first Sanitary Fair was launched in 
Chicago under the directing genius of Mrs. Jane Hoge and 
Mrs. Mary A. Livermore with the idea of raising $25,000. 
To the amazement of many who regarded the project as 
quixotic, more than $80,000 was realized. Other cities imi- 
tated and improved upon the example of Chicago, and not 
less than ten million dollars was contributed to the support 
of the Sanitary Commission by means of the fairs. 

To supplement the labors of the Sanitary Commission, the 
Christian Commission was established in November, 1861, 
primarily as an enterprise for carrying on evangelical work 
among the soldiers. This organization was also largely 
sustained by the women, its most unique service being the 
establishment of a system of diet kitchens for injured soldiers 



144 NEW VIEWPOINTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

which extended to every corps of the army. In the third 
year of the war a special Ladies* Christian Commission was 
organized, which by 1865 possessed two hundred and sixty- 
five branches in all parts of the North, mostly connected 
with evangelical churches. During the latter part of the 
war Soldiers' Homes and Soldiers' Rests were established 
by the women at all important railroad junctions, where the 
wants of traveling and wounded soldiers might be cared for. 
Thousands of women, distinguished by such heroines as 
Clara Barton, went to the front as nurses, enduring the hard- 
ships and horrors of camp life and battlefield with the men. 
Many women assumed masculine garb and served in the 
army. Of a different character though not less important 
were the services of the women on the western prairies, who 
when the men obeyed the nation's call took up the work of 
farming and helped to maintain agricultural production at a 
high degree of efficiency. 

Speaking of the work of the women during the war, 
Lincoln said: "I have never studied the art of paying com- 
pliments to women ; but I must say, that if all that has been 
said by orators and poets since the creation of the world were 
applied to the women of America, it would not do them 
justice for their conduct during this war." 

In the South the burdens borne by the women were even 
heavier. A larger proportion of the white men were in the 
army and the responsibility of the women was correspond- 
ingly greater. The women brought into use old spinning- 
wheels and looms in order to make clothing for the soldiers ; 
they denied themselves meat and drink that it might be sent 
to the army; they nursed wounded soldiers and worked in 
munition plants. The suggestion publicly made by one of 
them late in the war that all southern women cut off their 
hair and sell it to Europe, where it was believed it might 
bring $40,000,000, failed of execution only because it was 



ROLE OF WOMEN IN AMERICAN HISTORY 145 

impossible to run the federal blockade. Living in an invaded 
country, they experienced the horrors of v^ar all about them 
— homes destroyed, fields devastated, hostile soldiers on every 
hand. Yet they faltered not; and when their cause was 
crushed on the battlefield, they welcomed their soldiers home 
and, under conditions of bitter deprivation and deep humilia- 
tion, helped their husbands and sons to build a new South. 
The interest of leading women of the North in the cause 
of emancipation suffered no cessation in the midst of their 
war duties. Although the government made official an- 
nouncement at the outset that the war was being waged for 
preservation of the Union, these women insisted that it 
should be turned into a war for freedom. Several months 
after Lincoln's election Susan B. Anthony and Mrs. Stanton 
in company with some of the old time abolitionists sought 
to hold a series of conventions in the leading cities of the 
North to arouse public opinion to the pitch of demanding 
immediate emancipation; but the meetings were broken up 
at every point. The fact was that the majority of north- 
erners were not at this time enamoured of the idea of 
prosecuting a "nigger war"; and the Lincoln administra- 
tion was deeply convinced of the necessity of avoiding the 
issue in order to retain the allegiance of the four border slave 
states that had chosen to remain in the Union. The Emanci- 
pation Proclamation when it appeared was greeted by these 
women with only partial approval, inasmuch as it declared 
the freedom merely of such slaves as were yet to be found 
in unconquered southern territory. A nationwide call was 
sent out for a convention of women to meet in New York 
for the purpose of taking appropriate action. Delegates from 
many states attended. The Woman's National Loyal League 
was formed ; and resolutions were adopted urging the presi- 
dent to emancipate all the slaves in the nation and declaring 
that : "There never can be a true peace in this Republic until 



146 NEW VIEWPOINTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

the civil and political rights of all citizens of African descent 
and all women are practically established." The next eight- 
een months were spent in rolling up a mammoth petition, 
signed by 265,cx)0 men and women, urging that Congress 
take effective action for universal emancipation of the 
negroes. Charles Sumner, Horace Greeley and other public 
men believed that the activities of the Loyal League were a 
mighty educational factor in hastening the adoption of the 
thirteenth amendment. 

During the war all active campaigning for woman's rights 
had been suspended despite the protests of Susan B. Anthony. 
The suffrage leaders in the women's war work believed that 
when with the return of peace justice was bestowed upon 
the enslaved negro the grateful government would also re- 
ward the women with a gift of equal rights. They were 
amazed and incensed therefore when they discovered that 
the reconstruction statesmen were determined to ignore their 
claims. The fourteenth amendment, proposed in Congress 
in 1866, provided in its second section for a reduction of 
the representation of such states as withheld the ballot from 
male citizens of voting age. Thereby the word "male" was 
to be placed in the federal Constitution for the first time; 
the intent of the amendment was to extend federal pro- 
tection to male suffrage, leaving woman suffrage as hereto- 
fore to the mercy of the states. The women openly and 
repeatedly expressed their amazement that Congress should 
be willing to experiment with two million illiterate black men 
as voters while denying the ballot to women. They charged 
that the Republicans were not interested in establishing 
abstract justice as they professed but in building up a black 
Republican party in the South. In 1866 the American Equal 
Rights Society was formed through a merger of the former 
Woman Rights Society with a part of the old American 
An ti- Slavery Society ; and through this agency Congress was 



ROLE OF WOMEN IN AMERICAN HISTORY 147 

flooded with petitions against the proposed amendment. 
Their protest was unavailing ; and the cup of their humilia- 
tion was filled to the overflowing when an additional fif- 
teenth amendment was passed by Congress prohibiting any 
abridgment of the right to vote *'on account of race, color, 
or previous condition of servitude." With the addition of 
the word "sex" to the foregoing list, the suffrage leaders 
would have given their unqualified support to the amendment. 
The protagonists of woman rights now sought to turn defeat 
into victory by claiming that the fourteenth amendment, 
in declaring that all persons born or naturalized in the United 
States were citizens, had thereby really enfranchised all 
women. Acting upon this interpretation women actually 
attempted to vote in several states and in some cases suc- 
ceeded ; and it was not until a Supreme Court decision was 
rendered upon the point in 1875 that the women were con- 
vinced that the right of citizenship did not carry with it the 
right to vote. 

But the woman suffragists did not confine their efforts 
to Congress in the reconstruction period. In 1867 they 
presented their case to a state constitutional convention for 
the first time in history, that of New York, and fought a 
vigorous campaign to amend the constitution of Kansas. 
Their only success came two years later when in the far-off 
West the territory of Wyoming was organized on the basis 
of equal political rights for men and women. The same 
year the women began to re-form their ranks in preparation 
for the long struggle that lay ahead of them. The American 
Woman Suffrage Association was organized by suffragists 
who believed in centering their efforts upon the state legis- 
latures; and the next year the National Woman Suffrage 
Association succeeded the Equal Rights Society, pledged to 
the policy of concentrating suffrage efforts upon the national 
government. These two organizations, divided as to tactics 



148 NEW VIEWPOINTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

but agreeing fundamentally in purpose, remained apart for 
more than twenty years and involved a useless division of 
forces. Thus ^he period of reconstruction, which had 
seemed so full of hope for the woman's cause, closed with 
no substantial advances for the sex. The most promising 
opportunity which had yet come to them passed quickly into 
history and was soon forgotten by the nation in the throng- 
ing of other interests. 

IV 

The half -century from 1870 to 1920 was destined to wit- 
ness the triumph of the principle of sex equality. New 
elements, materialistic and spiritual, entered into the situa- 
tion which made inevitable at the end of the period what was 
scarcely thinkable at its beginning. Chief among these new 
factors was the great physical revolution in the woman's 
world which drove an unprecedented number of women into 
industry and trade; but, as we shall see, there were also 
other influences at work which were making for their intel- 
lectual and social advance and for their enlarged influence in 
government and society. 

The Civil War was followed by an era of rapid industrial 
development without equal in American history. The phe- 
nomenal demand for wage labor could be satisfied only by 
drawing into the factories great armies of women and chil- 
dren where they worked under precisely the same conditions 
as did the men. Already by 1870 one-seventh of the women 
over sixteen years of age were engaged in gainful pursuits ; 
and three decades later the proportion had increased to more 
than one-fifth. For hundreds of thousands of women, 
married and single, it thus happened that outside interests 
relegated the home to a secondary place, not because the 
women were discontented and insurgent but because modern 
conditions of industry had forced them out of their tradi- 



ROLE OF WOMEN IN AMERICAN HISTORY 149 

tional sphere. Wage-earning women were compelled in self- 
protection to take an interest in far-reaching questions of 
governmental and industrial policy affecting their welfare. 
In the seventies and eighties they began to enter the trade 
union movement ; others became zealous workers in the 
growing Socialist movement. The existence of this great 
class of wage-earning women gave fresh point to all the 
arguments for sex equality; and out of their ranks came 
many hearty workers for the elimination of sex barriers. 

With the widening of the industrial sphere new oppor- 
tunities of higher education began to open up to women, and 
educated women began to find new outlets for their energies 
and creative power. In 1865 the first women's college 
possessing ample funds was founded at Poughkeepsie, New 
York, by Matthew Vassar, whose ideal it was to maintain 
educational standards as exacting as those prevailing in the 
best men's colleges. The establishment of Vassar College 
cast a glamour of respectability about all subsequent enter- 
prises for the higher instruction of women. The western 
state universities began to fall in with the movement. Under 
a law of 1867 Wisconsin admitted women to the normal 
department of the university ; and three years later Michigan 
reversed the practice of almost thirty years by opening all 
the regular courses to women. The movement, so diffidently 
begun, gathered momentum until in 1920 more than one 
hundred institutions of higher learning devoted their entire 
time to women students, and about three hundred and fifty 
colleges and universities were classed as co-educational. 

On the whole it proved easier for women to establish their 
rights to a liberal education than to gain admission to the 
professional and technical courses. Notwithstanding the 
hopeful beginnings made in the period before the Civil War, 
women were for many years excluded from the best schools 
of medicine, law and theology. One of the leading medical 



150 NEW VIEWPOINTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

schools, Johns Hopkins, opened its doors to them in 1893; 
but when the medical schools of Columbia and Yale took 
similar action in 191 6, there still remained twenty-eight 
medical colleges closed to women, among them the medical 
departments of seven state universities. Law schools, other 
than those connected with the state universities, have been 
even slower to admit women. But in spite of all discrimina- 
tions and discouragements, women forged ahead in the pro- 
fessions. Although the first woman lawyer was admitted 
to the bar as late as 1869, there were more than one thousand 
women lawyers in the United States in 19 10. At the same 
time there were more than seven thousand women doctors, 
three thousand five hundred women preachers, two thousand 
women journalists, besides great numbers in teaching, com- 
merce, the civil service, and other pursuits. To women of 
this class the arguments for the equalization of sex oppor- 
tunities seemed axiomatic and they instinctively aligned them- 
selves with Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton 
in the woman movement. Many individuals among them 
possessed organizing ability of a high order and the gift of 
eloquence ; and to them, as we shall see, fell the responsibility 
as well as the credit of leading the sufifrage cause to its 
final triumph. 

Another factor working in the interests of feminine eman- 
cipation was the rise and development of women's clubs 
throughout the United States. The pioneers of the move- 
ment were the New England Woman's Club at Boston and 
the Sorosis at New York, both founded in 1868. The latter 
grew out of the discourteous treatment accorded to the 
women by the Press Club of New York on the occasion of 
the Dickens dinner. At first such clubs were few in number 
and purely literary or social in purpose, but the number of 
clubs increased as domestic conveniences became more com- 
mon and the housewife gained more time from domestic 



ROLE OF WOMEN IN AMERICAN HISTORY 151 

duties. By 1890 the clubs were so numerous and so wide- 
spread that they became federated in a great national system ; 
and the units began to communicate with each other and 
receive new ideas and inspiration. As time went on, the 
women paid less attention to art and literature and more to 
civic and social problems, for they had come to realize that 
under modern conditions the ''home" is not bounded by four 
walls but is directly affected by all the good and evil influ- 
ences of the community and of the state and nation. Thus 
they became interested in such problems as child welfare, 
education, food adulteration and inevitably in the suffrage 
question. The General Federation of Women's Clubs repre- 
sented a total membership of nearly one million women in 
1 910. The typical woman's club never became a center for 
strenuous suffrage agitation; but it was a means of educating 
many housewives to the significance of the demand and the 
lessons in organization that were learned served them in good 
stead in the battle for the ballot. 

The great enterprises of moral reform in the period since 
the Civil War were led and supported, in very large part, by 
women. The close connection between women and the tem- 
perance cause was recognized in a unique way when the 
Prohibition party at its initial national convention in 1872 
declared for equal suffrage, thus anticipating the major 
parties by forty-four years. In December of the following 
year began the remarkable Women's Temperance Crusade 
of 1 873- 1 874, inspired by a temperance address delivered by 
Dr. Dio Lewis of Boston at Hillsboro, Ohio. The women 
of the town gathered in the streets to pray and entered 
saloons, two by two, and exhorted the bartenders and 
drinkers to cease their evil ways. The movement spread in 
every direction. In fifty days it swept the liquor trafiic out 
of two hundred and fifty towns. But this exorcism was not 
lasting of effect; the saloon was found to be the outcropping 



152 NEW VIEWPOINTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

of the liquor system entrenched in law and possessing rami- 
fications in government and business. The women therefore 
saw need for revising their tactics, and in November, 1874, 
the Woman's Christian Temperance Union was founded. 
Under the guidance of Frances Willard this organization 
waxed strong, establishing branches in every state and 
territory and attaining the distinction of being the largest 
society composed exclusively of women and conducted 
entirely by them. The educational and political activities of 
the W. C. T. U. were a potent influence in preparing the 
public mind for the adoption of the federal prohibition 
amendment in 19 19. 

To women also must be given much of the credit for the 
rise and spread of the social welfare movement along scien- 
tific lines. One of the earliest and most successful settlement 
houses in America was Hull House, founded in Chicago by 
Jane Addams and Ellen G. Starr in 1889. The College 
Settlement Association of. New York originated in 1887 
among the students of Smith College. The playground 
movement and the development of agencies for scientific 
philanthropy also owe much to the initiative and continued 
support of women. The names of women workers in social 
service have been legion; the value of their labors beyond 
computation. 

The entrance of great numbers of women into all fields of 
human activity made the ancient legal fetters of the sex an 
intolerable anachronism. Their enhanced influence in the 
world of affairs led inevitably to the removal of the worst 
discriminations. By the beginning of the twentieth century 
legislative enactments had gone far toward introducing the 
principle of sex equality into American law. Married 
women might own and control their separate property in 
three-fourths of the states ; in every state a wife might dis- 
pose by will of her separate property. In about two-thirds 



ROLE OF WOMEN IN AMERICAN HISTORY 153 

of the states she was entitled to her own earnings; and in 
the large majority she might make contracts and bring suit. 
In many states the law provided that if the wife earned 
money outside the home the fruits of her labors were her 
own, but all her earnings within the household still belonged 
to the husband. Fathers and mothers possessed equal guar- 
dianship of children only in nine states and in the District 
of Columbia. Many inequalities in civil status remained; 
but the right of sex equality was no longer seriously ques- 
tioned, and time alone was required to assure to woman her 
full position in the eyes of the law. 

The expansion of woman's sphere in so many directions 
was accompanied by steady advances toward the cherished 
goal of equal political rights. The suffrage movement of the 
forties and fifties had possessed able heads but had lacked 
body; but with the exodus of great numbers of women from 
the home in the years following 1870, the movement con- 
tinued to develop leaders and slowly gained a mass of 
followers among both men and women which spelt eventual 
success. It is true that the time never came when all women 
were convinced of the righteousness of the suffrage cause. 
Many of them had continued to live sheltered lives and knew 
little of the dynamic changes that had transformed the life 
of their sex ; others felt that the problems of democracy were 
already sufficiently baffling without increasing the numbers 
of the electorate. In 1873 ^ committee of women protested 
to Congress against the proposal to grant equal suffrage; 
and some years later a National Association Opposed to the 
Extension of Woman Suffrage, composed of women, was 
formed. 

The progress toward full equal suffrage was gradual but 
certain. In the early years following the Civil War some of 
the western states ventured to adopt the principle of worfian 
suffrage in a local and limited sense. Kansas granted the 



154 NEW VIEWPOINTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

vote to women in school elections in 1861 ; Michigan and 
Minnesota followed in 1875, and thereafter numerous other 
states emulated their example. In some states women were 
permitted to vote in local elections involving bond issues or 
taxation questions. Complete equality in voting was not 
granted by any state until the territory of Wyoming was 
admitted into the Union in 1890. Three other far western 
states followed by 1896 ; and then there came a lull of four- 
teen years during which no further advances were made 
toward complete equal suffrage. 

While suffrage campaigns were being fought in the various 
states, renewed effort was being made to secure affirmative 
action from the federal government. One wing of the 
suffrage leaders was convinced that the swiftest road to 
success lay in an amendment to the federal Constitution. 
Beginning with 1870 they argued each year before Congres- 
sional committees for an equal suffrage amendment. Peti- 
tions by the thousands were poured into Congress. Finally 
in 1878, Senator A. A. Sargent of California introduced the 
amendment for action by Congress. The phraseology of 
Sargent's amendment is historic, for the language was framed 
by Susan B. Anthony and forty-two years later was em- 
bodied as the nineteenth amendment in the United States 
Constitution. The zeal of the women had other results as 
well. Between 1878 and 1896 committees of the Senate 
reported five times in favor of a suffrage amendment and 
House committees twice ; but action went no further. 
Thereafter Susan B. Anthony ceased spending her winters 
in Washington and Congress ceased to concern itself with 
the matter until the suffrage movement entered a new era 
about 1910. 

The situation of affairs at Washington clearly demon- 
strated that Congress was not disposed to give serious con- 
sideration to the demands of the women until a larger 
number of individual Congressmen owed their seats to the 



ROLE OF WOMEN IN AMERICAN HISTORY 155 

favor of women voters. The efforts of the years following 
1896 were thrown very largely into state campaigns though 
uniformly without success. Finally in 1910 a new spirit of 
progressivism began to make itself felt throughout the land, 
creating schism within the Republican party and exciting 
wide public interest in legislation for social justice. Taking 
advantage of the new spirit of the times, suffrage leaders 
redoubled their efforts. The National American Woman 
Suffrage Association, led by Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt, 
set to work with renewed determination. At the national 
capital a group of women under the leadership of Alice Paul 
formed the Congressional Union in 191 3, resolved to bring 
the federal government to terms through the use of sensa- 
tional and militant methods. Results began to appear. 
Again it was the trans-Mississippi West that pointed the 
way; and before New York acted in 1917, twelve states of 
that section had accepted women on equal political terms with 
men. A number of state legislatures finding constitutional 
barriers in the way of full enfranchisement followed the 
example of lUinois (191 3) by granting the vote to women 
in presidential elections only. 

As the number of equal suffrage states increased, the 
coercive effect of the vast body of new voters upon Congress 
became apparent. In the Senate of 1913 eighteen members 
had woman constituents. Irrespective of the merits of the 
question, party leaders could now foresee the outcome and 
they resolved to reap such partisan advantages as they might 
from their advocacy of the federal franchise for women. 
Hardly a year passed after 19 13 without a vote being taken 
on the submission of a constitutional amendment, either in 
one or both houses of Congress. Finally in 1919, under the 
spur of a special message from President Wilson, the neces- 
sary two-thirds majority was obtained ; and the states ratified 
the new amendment in time for the women to take part in 
the approaching presidential election. 



156 NEW VIEWPOINTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY 



The entrance of the United States into the World War 
in 191 7 undoubtedly hastened the adoption of federal suf- 
frage for women because of the indispensable part which 
the women of America played in making the war a success 
for the Allies. A few days after the declaration of war the 
National Woman's Committee was created by the Council 
of National Defense, with Dr. Anna Howard Shaw as Presi- 
dent, and charged with the duty of coordinating the patriotic 
activities of the women of the nation. Branches of the 
national body were organized in every state and the state 
committees undertook to set up Woman's Committees in 
every county and city. 

Under the supervision of these central committees the 
war work of the women attained a degree of efficiency un- 
rivalled in the history of the world. No city or hamlet was 
without its circle of devoted women gathering daily or weekly 
under the auspices of the American Red Cross to roll band- 
ages, make clothing, or prepare special foods for the soldiers. 
One department of the Red Cross was concerned exclusively 
with looking after the interests of families and relatives left 
dependent by the enlistment of the breadwinners in the army 
or navy. Women flocked into the civil service in order to 
enable the government to carry on its greatly expanded 
• functions ; they assisted actively in the flotation of the vari- 
ous Liberty Loans; they worked in munition factories and 
other essential industries, thus releasing men for active field 
service. They undertook protective work for girls in the 
neighborhood of the great army encampments and raised 
money for building dormitories and "community houses" 
where civilian friends and relatives of the soldiers might be 
accommodated. Thousands of women went abroad with the 
Expeditionary Forces, serving in a great variety of capacities 



ROLE OF WOMEN IN AMERICAN HISTORY 157 

from Red Cross nurses and Salvation Army workers to office 
clerks and Y. M. C. A. entertainers. In the maintenance of 
the morale of the troops perhaps no single factor was of 
more importance than the unswerving patriotism of the 
women. 

Without any disparagement of the high importance of 
such services, it is probably true that the greatest contribution 
of the women to victory was made in an altogether different 
field, that of food conservation. From the outset the govern- 
ment recognized the supreme need of carrying food to the 
armies and exhausted populations of the Allied countries. 
The housewives of the nation rallied promptly to the call 
of the Food Administrator to conserve food and increase the 
local food supplies. Few homes were without ''pledge- 
cards" in the windows; and few were the homes in which 
"wheatless days" .and "meatless meals" were not as con- 
scientiously observed as if prescribed by law. Women were 
also active in planting "war gardens," and the Woman's Land 
Army of America played no inconsiderable part in supplying 
woman farm labor. 

No more fitting tribute has been accorded the war work 
of our women than that paid by Sir George Paish in a 
public address in London in April, 1920: "When I hear 
people say that America won the war, I assent. I go farther. 
I say that the war was won by the women of America. 
In the years of food shortage it was the American women 
who made it possible for us to have enough food to go round. 
American women ate maize that we might eat wheat." 

Women are today standing upon the threshold of a new 
era in the history of their sex; and whatever affects the 
status of woman in America will affect the entire people 
of which they are so intimately a part. W'omen in the 
United States are now, in most respects, a part of human 
society literally and directly, not merely as represented by 



158 NEW VIEWPOINTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

men to whom they "belong" in some relation. They are 
directly responsible for their choices and decisions and are 
placed in a position to increase immeasurably their contri- 
butions to American development. In speculating as to the 
use that women will make of the vote, it is not to be over- 
looked that the women are better prepared for their new 
responsibilities than any previous class admitted to the fran- 
chise. The beneficiaries of white manhood suffrage in 
Jackson's day were undisciplined and uneducated; and the 
black men, enfranchised a generation later, were on an infi- 
nitely lower plane of public morality and individual fitness. 
The value of the ballot to the women themselves as an 
educative force cannot be doubted; and any knowhdge of 
the past services of women to American history is an assur- 
ance that the women will use their new power for the good 
of the nation and of humanity. 

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 

Historians have generally ignored woman as a positive influence 
in American history and have usually omitted even any mention of 
her struggle for sex equality. This task has thus fallen to other 
hands. Belle Squire in her little volume entitled The Woman Move- 
ment in America (Chicago, 191 1) was the first writer to attempt to 
set forth the part that women as a class have played in all periods 
of American history. The volume was originally written as a series 
of articles for newspaper use and was based very largely upon The 
History of Woman Suffrage by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and others, 
mentioned hereinafter. In the next year H. Addington Bruce pub- 
lished his book Woman in the Making of America (Boston, 1912), 
which attempted to accomplish the same purpose but with less 
success. Since the appearance of these books, little has been done 
toward making further applications of the point of view ; and the 
only^ history school book which has availed itself of this approach 
to the subject is Charles A. Beard and William C. Bagley's The 
History of the American People (New York, 1918). It is unthink- 
able that this neglect should continue in the new era of historical 
writmg ushered in by the adoption of the nineteenth amendment. 

For a long period of years appreciative studies have been rnade 
by writers interested in the influence of women in special periods 
of American history. Some of the more important of these special 
studies are the following : Alice Morse Earle's Colonial Dames and 



ROLE OF WOMEN IN AMERICAN HISTORY 159 

Housewives (Boston, 1895) ; Sydney George Fisher's Men, Women 
and Manners in Colonial Times (2 v.; Philadelphia, 1898); Harry 
Clinton Green and Mary Wolcott Green's The Pioneer Mothers of 
America (3* v.; New York, 1912) ; Elizabeth F. Ellet's The Women 
of the American Revolution (4th ed., New York, 1849) ; Gaillard 
Hunt's Life in America One Hundred Years Ago (New York, 
1914), chap, x; Elizabeth F. Ellet's The Pioneer Women of the 
West (New York, 1852) ; L. P. Brockett and M. C Vaughan's 
Woman's Work in the Civil War (Philadelphia, 1867) ; Frank 
Moore's Women of the War (Hartford, 1866) ; Mary Forrest's 
Women of the South (New York, 1865) ; John L. Underwood's The 
Women of the Confederacy (New York, 1906). 

The great arsenal of facts pertaining to the woman rights move- 
ment in America prior to 1902 is the monumental work entitled The 
History of Woman Suffrage (4 v.; 2d ed., Rochester, 1889-1902) by 
Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Matilda Joslyn Gage 
and others. All subsequent writers have made generous use of the 
materials brought together in these volumes. Since 1902 many 
valuable studies have been made of special aspects of woman's life 
and activities in the United States, among which may be mentioned 
Edith Abbott's Women in Industry (New York, 1910) ; Arthur W. 
Calhoun's Social History of the American Family from Colonial 
Times to the Present (3 v.; Cleveland, 1917-1919) ; E. A. Hecker's 
Short History of Women's Rights (New York, 191 1) ; Bertha A. 
Rembaugh's The Political Status of Women in the United States 
(New York, 1911) ; J. M. Taylor's Before Vassar Opened (Boston, 
1914) ; Jennie Lansley Wilson's The Legal and Political Status of 
Women in the United States (Cedar Rapids, 1912) ; Mary I. Wood's 
The History of the General Federation of Women's Clubs (New 
York, 1912). Of considerable value also is Mrs. J. C. Croly's The 
History of the Woman's Club Movement in America (New York, 
1898). 

In dealing with women in American history the biographical 
approach has been most popular. As examples of this type of litera- 
ture the following books may be cited: Elmer C. Adams and 
Warren D. Foster's Heroines of Modern Progress (New York, 
1913) ; Gamaliel Bradford's Portraits of American Women (Bos- 
ton, 1919) ; Grace Humphreys's Women in American History 
(Indianapolis, 1919) ; Mary R. Parkman's Heroines of Serine e (New 
York, 1917) ; Virginia Tatnall Peacock's Famous American Belles 
of the Nineteenth Century (Philadelphia, 1901) ; Kate D. Sweetser's 
Ten American Girls from History (New York, 1917) ; Lillian 
Whiting's Women Who Have Ennobled Life (Philadelphia, 19^5). 
Excellent biographies have also appeared of individual women, such 
as Susan B. Anthony, Margaret Fuller, Clara Barton, Harriet 
Beecher Stowe and Mary A. Livermore. 



CHAPTER VII 

THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION 

When the representatives of George V rendered homage 
a few years ago at the tomb of the great disloyalist and rebel 
of a former century, George Washington, the minds of many 
Americans reverted, with a sense of bewilderment, to the 
times when another King George was guiding the destinies 
of the British nation. The fact is that the average American 
still accepts without qualification or question the partisan 
justifications of the struggle for independence which have 
come down from the actual participants in the affair on the 
American side. These accounts, colored by the emotions 
and misunderstandings of the times and designed to arouse 
the colonists to a warlike pitch against the British govern- 
ment, have formed the basis of the treatments in our school 
textbooks and have served to perpetuate judgments of the 
American Revolution which no fair-minded historian can 
accept today. Indeed, many Americans of the present 
generation who readily admit that there is much to be said 
for the southern side in the Civil War condemn as un- 
patriotic any effort to consider the origins of the War for 
Independence from a standpoint of scientific historical 
detachment. Fortunately our conception of patriotism is 
undergoing revision, for Germany has taught us the danger 
of teaching propaganda in the guise of history; and the 
teacher and writer of history today is charged with the 
responsibility of being as scrupulously fair to other nations 
as to the United States in dealing with the subject matter 
of American history. 

i6« 



THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION i6i 

In yet another way the popular understanding of the revo- 
lutionary movement is strangely at fault. We are inclined 
to think of the Revolution as a spontaneous uprising of the 
whole colonial population without faction or disagreement 
among them. Nothing could be farther from the truth 
according to the testimony of the patriots themselves. 
Thomas Hutchinson, the royal governor of Massachusetts, 
declared to a committee of Parliament in 1779 that at the 
outbreak of the war not one-fifth of the people "had inde- 
pendence in view"; and John Adams, who would scarcely 
be inclined to understate the number of the patriots, gave 
his opinion that about one-third of the people were opposed 
to the measures of the Revolution in all its stages. The 
great problem of the patriot leaders, Adams admitted in 
after years, was to keep the spirit of protest and revolt 
burning with equal intensity in the thirteen colonies or, as 
he said more crisply, to get the thirteen clocks to strike at 
the same time. 

Nor was the American Revolution the sedate and gentle- 
manly affair that the popular historians have pictured it. 
Sydney George Fisher is amply justified in charging that 
since the people who write histories usually belong to the 
class who take the side of government in a revolution, they 
**have accordingly tried to describe a revolution in which all 
scholarly, refined, and conservative persons might have un- 
hesitatingly taken part." The fact is that the American 
Revolution, as we now know it to have been, is infinitely 
more interesting and human, and provocative of patriotism, 
than the make-believe revolution handed down by tradition. 



The very term "American Revolution" is not without 
difficulties and its use has led to misconception and con- 
fusion. In letter after letter John Adams tried to teach a 



i62 NEW VIEWPOINTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

headstrong generation some degree of accuracy in the use 
of an expression of whose meaning they had knowledge only 
by hearsay. **A history of the first war of the United 
States is a very different thing from a history of the Amer- 
ican Revolution," he wrote in 1815. "... The revolution 
was in the minds of the people, and in the union of the 
colonies, both of which were accomplished before hostilities 
commenced. This revolution and union were gradually 
forming from the years 1760 to 1776." And to another 
correspondent he wrote: "But what do we mean by the 
American Revolution? Do we mean the American war? 
The Revolution was effected before the war commenced. 
The Revolution was in the minds and hearts of the people." 

This distinction is not only valid in point of fact but it 
offers a helpful avenue of approach for a consideration of 
the circumstances of the nation's birth. If the period from 
1760 to 1776 is not viewed merely as the prelude to the 
American Revolution, the military struggle may frankly be 
regarded for what it actually was, namely a war to dis- 
member the British empire, an armed attempt to impose the 
views of the revolutionists upon the British government and 
a large section of the colonial population at whatever cost to 
freedom of opinion or the sanctity of life and property. 
The major emphasis is thus placed upon the clashing of eco- 
nomic interests and the interplay of mutual prejudices, oppos- 
ing ideals and personal antagonisms — whether in England or 
America — which made inevitable in 1776 what was un- 
thinkable in 1760. 

Without considering here the remote and latent causes 
of the revolt, a discussion of the American Revolution may 
profitably begin with the effort of the British government to 
reorganize the British empire after the Peace of Paris of 
1763. Of this empire the thirteen colonies along the Atlantic 
seaboard had, by virtue of the recent peace, become but a 



THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION 163 

small part. British statesmen felt the imperative need of 
correcting the slothful and unsystematic methods of colonial 
management by which some of the older colonies had been 
granted more liberal government than that enjoyed by 
organized territories of the United States today, and under 
which all the continental American colonies had become 
neglectful or defiant of ordinary imperial obligations. There 
was a need that all the outlying British possessions should 
be more closely integrated for purposes of administration 
and that the far-flung empire should be defended against the 
ambitions of England's traditional enemies, France and 
Spain, as well as against the restlessness of the alien subject 
populations. The problem which confronted the British 
government was much more difficult than the questions of 
colonial organization with which the American government 
has wrestled since 1898; but the American adventure in 
imperialism, involving, as it did, the question of whether the 
Constitution followed the flag, should enable Americans of 
the present generation to view with sympathy the British 
experiment of the eighteenth century. 

The king's ministers glimpsed too narrowly the task before 
them. What they regarded as an exercise in the mechanics 
of legislation was really an innovation in imperial relations 
that touched the dynamic currents of colonial opinion and 
colonial economic interest at many vital points. Moreover, 
their attempt was being made at a time when the colonies 
were, for the first time in their history, relieved of their 
most urgent need of British protection by the removal of 
the French menace from their frontiers. Under the earlier 
imperial policy of "salutary neglect" the colonies had grown 
in wealth and political experience, so that by the middle of 
the eighteenth century they had become accustomed to con- 
duct themselves toward England as substantially equal 
commonwealths in a federation united by a common mon- 



i64 NEW VIEWPOINTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

arch. For the colonists the new imperial policy involved 
unaccustomed tax burdens, the loss of trading profits, and 
limitations of self-government — advantages that were none 
the less precious because derived from an unwritten and un- 
sanctioned constitution. Fundamentally, the great problem 
of the decade following the peace of 1763 was the problem 
of the reconciliation of centralized imperial control with 
colonial home rule. This, unfortunately, was never clearly 
perceived by the dominant element on either side, the issue 
being obscured by a blind officialism on the one hand and by 
an unillumined particularism on the other. 

Perhaps the problem was incapable of solution ; but we 
can see now that the best opportunity for a satisfactory 
outcome lay in the application to the situation of an en- 
lightened statecraft on the part of Great Britain. To this 
the posture of political affairs in that country was not well 
adapted. George III, who had ascended the throne in 1760, 
was already devoting every political and financial resource 
in his power to the task of converting the British government 
from an aristocracy of great Whig families into a personal 
autocracy. His Parliament and ministers did not seek to 
reflect the aspirations of the British public and therefore 
lacked a potent incentive for the formulation of a conciliatory 
program of colonial subordination. The minority in Parlia- 
ment represented by Pitt and Burke readily identified the 
struggle of the colonists to preserve home rule with their 
own struggle in England against autocratic rule. Pitt was 
thinking primarily of Englishmen at home when he ex- 
claimed on the occasion of the Stamp Act commotions : "I 
rejoice that America has resisted." If his counsel had been 
followed, it is possible that the colonial revolt might have 
been forestalled by some plan of imperial federation. 



THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION 165 

II 

With this brief glance at affairs in Great Britain it is now 
possible to consider the situation in America. Conditions 
there were both simpler and more complex than the tradi- 
tional accounts represent. In place of thirteen units of 
population thinking alike on most public questions, there 
were in fact three major bodies of population, differentiated 
by physiographical conditions, economic interest and polit- 
ical ideals. The communities on the coastal plain fromjjew 
Hampshire to Pennsylvania constituted one of these divi- 
sions ; the settlements of the tidewater region from Maryland 
to Georgia formed another ; and the third, less clearly defined 
geographically, consisted of the frontier districts of many of 
the_praYinces. These three divisions represented modes of 
living and mental attitudes much more fundamental than 
those signified by the artificial groupings of population within 
provincial boundaries. 

The first area consisted of the commercial colonies; the 
dominant economic interest of the people was the carrying 
trade and shipbuilding. In the port towns of New England 
and the Middle Colonies great mercantile families had grown 
up, who had gained their wealth through smuggling with the 
West Indies or else through legitimate trading enterprises 
that embraced the entire world. The merchants were keenly 
alive to the golden benefits which membership in the British 
empire had always yielded ; and like the business interests of 
any generation or clime, they might be expected to combat 
any effort to tamper with the source of their profits. For 
the merchants the unfolding of the new imperial program 
involved a very serious interference with their customary 
trading operations; and during the decade from 1764 to 
1774 their constant aim was to effect a restoration of the 
commercial conditions of 1763. As a class they entertained 



i66 NEW VIEWPOINTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

neither earlier nor later the idea of independence, for with- 
drawal from the British empire meant for them the loss of 
vital business advantages without corresponding benefits in 
a world organized on a basis of imperial trading systems. 
They strove to obtain the most favorable terms possible 
within the empire but not to leave it. Indeed, they viewed 
with no small concern the growth of republican feeling and 
leveling sentiment which the controversy occasioned. 

The great ports of the north — Boston, New York, Phila- 
delphia, Newport — bore eloquent testimony to the prosperity 
of the mercantile class ; and on the continuance of this pros- 
perity depended the livelihood of the mechanics and petty 
shopkeepers of the towns and, to a lesser degree, the well- 
being of the farmers whose cereals and meats were exported 
to the West Indies. This proletarian element was not in- 
clined "by temperament to that self-restraint in movements 
of popular protest which was ever the arriere pensee of the 
merchant class ; and being for the most part unenfranchised, 
they expressed their sentiments most naturally through bois- 
terous mass meetings and mob demonstrations. 

In the second of the three areas, the tidewater region of 
the South, colonial capital was invested almost exclusively 
in plantation production; and commerce was carried on 
chiefly by British mercantile houses and their American 
agents, the factors. The only town in the plantation prov- 
inces that could compare with the teeming ports of the North 
was Charleston, for the prevailing form of life was rural 
in character. All political activity sprang from the periodical 
meetings of the great landed proprietors in the assemblies. 
Under the wasteful system of marketing, which the apparent 
plenty of plantation life made possible, the planters found 
themselves treading a morass of indebtedness to British 
merchants from which it seemed that nothing less..-, than 
virtual repudiation could extricate them. As Jefferson 



THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION 167 

testified, "these debts had become hereditary from father to 
son, for many generations, so that the planters were a species 
of property annexed to certain mercantile houses in London." 
In the last quarter of a century prior to independence the 
provincial assemblies passed a succession of lax bankruptcy 
acts and other legislation detrimental to non-resident cred- 
itors ; but these laws nearly always ran afoul the royal veto. 
This fact, together with the sturdy sense of self-determina- 
tion which the peculiar social system fostered, made the 
plantation provinces ready to resent any fresh exercise of 
parliamentary authority over the colonies, such as the new 
imperial policy involved. Georgia, the infant colony of the 
thirteen, still dependent upon the mother government for 
subsidies and for protection against a serious Indian menace, 
was less affected by these considerations, and indeed lagged 
behind her southern sisters throughout the revolutionary 
period. 

On the western fringe of the two coastal areas lay an 
irregular belt of back-country settlements whose economy 
and psychological outlook were almost as distinctive as those 
of the two tidewater regions. Certainly the western sections 
of many of the provinces had grievances in common and 
resembled each other more than they did the older sections 
with which they were associated by provincial boundaries. 
These pioneer settlements extended north and south, up and 
down the valleys between the fall line of the rivers and 
mountains, from New England to Georgia. Outside of New 
England the majority of the settlers were dissenters of non- 
English strains, mostly German and Scotch Irish; but 
throughout the long frontier the people cultivated small iso- 
lated farms and entertained democratic ideas in harmony 
with the equalitarian conditions in which they lived. As has 
already been pointed out elsewere in this volume, the back- 
country inhabitants in many of the provinces had long been 



i68 NEW VIEWPOINTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

discriminated against by the older settlements in the matter 
of representation in the assemblies, the administration of 
justice and the incidence of taxation; and they were thus 
familiar, of their own experience, with all the arguments 
which the Revolution was to make popular against non- 
representative government and unjust taxation. Being self- 
sustaining communities economically, their, zeal for popular 
rights was in no wise alloyed by the embarrassment of their 
pocketbooks. Although out of harmony with the popular 
leaders of the seaboard in both the commercial and plantation 
provinces on many matters of domestic politics, they could 
join forces with them in protest against the new imperial 
policy; and they brought to the controversy a moral con- 
viction and bold philosophy which gave great impetus to the 
agitation for independence.^ 

The history of the American Revolution is, in very large 
part, the story of the reaction of these three sections to the 
successive acts of the British government and of their inter- 
action upon each other. The merchants of the commercial 
colonies were the most seriously affected by the new imperial 
policy and at the outset assumed the leadership of the colonial 
movement of protest. They were closely seconded by the 
planters of the south as soon as enough time had elapsed 
to make clear to the latter the implications of the issue of 
home rule for which the merchants stood.^/ The democratic 
farmers of the interior, more or less out of contact with the 
political currents of the seaboard, were slower to take part; 
and it is largely true that their measure of participation 
varied inversely to the degree of their isolation. Patrick 
Henry and his fellow burgesses from the western counties 

^ In Georgia, however, the frontier settlers were pro-British in their sympathies 
because of their dependence on the home government for protection against the 
ever-present menace of the Creeks. Twenty-five years ago Professor J. S. 
Bassett, in a discriminating study, showed why the people of the interior coun- 
ties of North Carolina became loyalists when the issue of independence was raised. 
Had the friction between the interior democracies and the coastal minorities de- 
veloped to the point of armed rebellion in other provinces prior to 1776, the 
back-country folk might everywhere have thrown their weight on the side of 
the British government and thus have defeated the Revolution. 



THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION 169 

of Virginia began to undermine the conservatism of the tide- 
water statesmen as early as 1765, but the Germans and 
Scotch-Irish of Pennsylvania did not make their influence 
fully felt until the critical days of 1 774-1 775. 

A complicating factor in the revolutionary movement was 
supplied by the religious conditions existing in the colonies, 
of which only brief mention can be made here. Religious 
antagonisms were of chief importance in accentuating dif- 
ferences between the colonies and the mother country that 
already existed because of economic and geographic reasons. 
This is not gainsaying that sectarian feeling, which had been 
an important motive in colonization, played a larger part in 
shaping the political conduct of people in colonial times than 
it has at any later period of American history. The great 
majority of the colonists belonged to the dissenting sects; 
and for historic reasons it was natural that there should be 
more or less distrust and jealousy felt by them toward ad- 
herents of the Church of England, among whom the royal 
officials and their hangers-on were prominently to be found. 
Indeed, the two hundred and fifty Episcopal clergymen offi- 
ciating in the colonies on the eve of the Revolutionary War 
had all received ordination in England, and most of those in 
the northern provinces were pensioners of an English mis- 
sionary society. The antagonism to England on this score 
was undoubtedly increased during the revolutionary period 
in many parts of America by the persistent rumor that the 
English government was planning to send bishops to the 
colonies. It was John Adams's belief, expressed in after 
years, that the widespread dread of an Anglican episcopate 
and an established church contributed '*as much as any other 
cause" to sharpening the keen edge of popular antipathy 
against the mother country. As the radical party grew 
stronger, Anglican clergymen had to decide whether they 
would observe the patriotic fast days proclaimed as a protest 
against England and, finally, whether they would omit in 



170 NEW VIEWPOINTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

their services the prayers for the king. Those who persisted 
were in many cases roughly handled. 

The Congregational ministers of New England were active 
agents in keeping alive colonial discontent. It was a royal 
office-holder who noted that the women of the flocks aided 
American manufactures by spinning flax six days of the 
week and "on the seventh, the Parsons took their turns and 
spun out their prayers and sermons to a long thread of 
Politics." The only organic and official action taken by a 
religious denomination in behalf of the American cause was 
that of the Presbyterians, who delegated the only minister 
in the Congress of 1776 to give their vote for independence. 
Some insight into contemporary opinion of the relation of 
religion to politics is afforded, for instance, by the customary 
usage of the terms Presbyterians and Episcopalians by Judge 
Thomas Jones, the New York loyalist, as almost synonymous 
with the terms rebels and loyalists. Joseph Galloway, an- 
other loyalist, who had attained high office in Pennsylvania 
by the suffrages of his fellow-colonists, ascribed the colonial 
revolt largely to the machinations of the Presbyterians and 
the New England Congregationalists and believed that the 
alliance formed by the two sects in 1764 was a factor of 
prime importance in the promotion of the spirit for inde- 
pendence. Such generalizations may be pushed too far, 
however, for numerous exceptions may be noted. Thus the 
Episcopalians of the southern tidewater region, where the 
ministers were supported locally, were as strongly opposed 
to the importation of English prelates as were the Congre- 
gationalists of New England, and many of the clergy and 
laity took active part in the Revolutionary War. 

Ill 

The new British policy of imperial control assumed its 
first form under George Grenville (1764- 1765). The 



THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION 171 

numerous regulations of trade, which need not be analyzed 
here, injured fair traders and smuggling merchants alike and 
threatened bankruptcy to the great mercantile houses of 
Boston, New York and Philadelphia. The prohibition of 
colonial legal tender added to their woes and indeed made 
the hard-pressed planters of the South sharers in the general 
distress. The Stamp Act, with its far-reaching taxes burden- 
some alike to merchant and farmer, sealed the union of 
commercial and plantation provinces at the same time that 
it afforded an opportunity for placing the colonial argument 
on constitutional grounds; and because of the character of 
the taxation, it rallied to the colonial position the powerful 
support of the lawyers and newspaper proprietors. The 
plan of the British to garrison their new acquisitions in 
America and to station a few detachments of troops in the 
older colonies was, in the feverish state of the public mind, 
envisaged as a brazen attempt to intimidate the colonies into 
submission. The merchants of some of the ports, intent on 
restoring the conditions of their former prosperity, adopted 
resolutions of non-importation ; and little recking the future, 
they aroused the populace to a sense of British injustice, even 
to the extent of countenancing and instigating mob excesses 
and the destruction of property. 

In the end Parliament resolved upon the passage of certain 
remedial laws (1766), an outcome which, from the stand- 
point of the more radical colonists, can be regarded as little 
more than a compromise. The Stamp Act was indeed re- 
pealed and important alterations were made in the trade 
regulations ; but the Currency Act, the regulations against 
smuggling and the provisions for a standing army remained 
unchanged. In addition the Declaratory Act was passed; 
and the new molasses duty was an unvarnished application 
of the principle of "taxation without representation" an- 
nounced in the Declaratory Act. The rejoicing of the col- 



172 NEW VIEWPOINTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

onists can be explained only on the ground that the merchants 
of the North dominated colonial opinion; and like practical 
men of affairs, they were contemptuous, if not fearful, of 
disputes turning upon questions of abstract right. 
^^ The passage of the Townshend Acts in 1767 was the 
second attempt of Parliament to reconstruct the empire in 
the spirit of the Grenville experiment. Again the merchants 
of the commercial colonies perceived themselves as the class 
whose interests were chiefly imperiled ; but sobered by the 
mob outrages of Stamp Act days, they resolved to guide the 
course of American opposition in orderly and peaceful chan- 
nels. They, therefore, began an active agitation for correc- 
tive legislation through merchants' petitions and legislative 
memorials to Parliament; and after much questioning of 
each other's good faith they succeeded in developing an 
elaborate system of commercial boycott, which united the 
commercial colonies in an effort to secure the repeal of the 
objectionable laws. After a year or so this movement in 
a much modified form spread to the plantation provinces, 
where, under the leadship of Washington and other planters, 
it was employed as a means of preventing the landed aris- 
tocracy from falling more deeply into the toils of their British 
creditors. 

Meantime the merchants began to see that in organizing 
their communities for peaceful resistance to Great Britain 
they were unavoidably releasing disruptive forces which, like 
Frankenstein's monster, they were finding it impossible to 
control. The failure of non-importation to effect swift re- 
dress compelled the merchant bodies, as the months passed, 
to depend more and more upon the tumultuous methods of 
the proletariat in order to keep wavering merchants true to 
the cause. Increasing friction between smuggling merchants 
and customs officers also produced outbreaks of mob violence 
in many provinces, and led by a broad, smooth road to such 
distressing affairs as the Boston "Massacre" on the one hand 



./ ';\-.c 



THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION 173 

and to the destruction of the revenue cutter Gaspee on the 
other. As the political agitators and turbulent elements 
gained the upper hand, the contest began to assume mor^ 
clearly thp form of a crusade for constitutional and natural%fc« 
rights; and when word arrived in May, 1770, that Parlia- 
ment had repealed all the Townshend duties except the 
trifling tax on tea, the merchants found it difficult to reassert 
their earlier control and to stop a movement that had lost all 
significance for hard-headed men of business. The mer- 
chants of New York, under the leadership of their newly 
formed Chamber of Commerce, were the first who were 
able to wrench loose from their enforced alliance with the 
radicals; and the cancellation of their boycott resolutions 
was soon followed by similar action in the ports of Phila- 
delphia and Boston. The plantation provinces were coolly 
left in the lurch notwithstanding that Parliament had not 
receded from its position of arbitrary taxation, and the move- 
ment there soon died of inanition. 

The two or three years that followed the partial repeal of 
the Townshend duties were, for the most part, years of 
material prosperity and political calm. ; The merchants had 
grown to look askance at a doctrine of home rule which left 
it uncertain who was to rule at home. As a class they 
eagerly agreed with the merchant-politician Thomas Cush- 
ing that ''high points about the supreme authority of Parlia- 
ment" should best "fall asleep." And so — John Hancock as 
well as Isaac Low — ^they deserted politics for business, even 
to the extent of importing dutied tea which people imbibed 
everywhere except at Philadelphia and New York, where 
local conditions made it possible for merchants to offer the 
cheaper Dutch tea to consumers. The sun of the radicals 
had suffered an eclipse; and quietly biding their time, they 
began to apply to their own following the lessons of organi- 
zation that they had learned from the "mercantile dons." In 
the commercial colonies Sam Adams — "that Matchiavel of 



174 NEW VIEWPOINTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

Chaos" as Thomas Hutchinson loved to call him — sought, 
through the establishment of town committees of correspon- 
dence, to unite the workingmen of the port towns and the 
farmers of the rural districts in political action; and the 
burgesses of Virginia launched their plan of a provincial 
committee of correspondence that might give uncensored 
expression to the political grievances of the southern plant- 
ers. Under the spur of fresh irritations both plans were to 
spread to the other provinces w^here, by supplementing each 
other, they came in time to form the basis of the radical 
party organization throughout British America. 

In May, 1773, a new tea act was passed by Parliament, 
which stampeded the merchants into joining forces once 
more with the political radicals and irresponsible elements. 
This new law, if put into operation, would have enabled the 
great East India Company to monopolize the colonial tea 
market to the exclusion of both American smugglers and 
law-abiding tea traders. Alarmed at this prospect and fear- 
ful lest further monopolistic privileges in trade might follow 
from the success of the present experiment, the colonial 
merchant class joined in an active popular agitation for the 
purpose of preventing the landing of any of the tea importa- 
tions of the East India Company. Though their efforts for 
a vigorous but restrained opposition met with substantial 
success elsewhere, they were overreached at Boston by the 
superior management of Sam Adams and the unintelligence 
of Governor Hutchinson, whose sons were tea consignees; 
and the British trading company became the involuntary host 
at a tea party costing £15,000. 

IV 

The Boston Tea Party marked a turning point in the 
course of events both in America and Britain. In both 
countries it was regarded by the merchants and moderates 



THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION 175 

as a lawless destruction of private property and an act of 
wanton defiance which no self-respecting government could 
wisely ignore. Plainly the issue between the colonies and 
the mother country had ceased to be one of mere trading 
advantage. Outside of New England, colonial opinion, so 
far as it expressed itself, greeted the event with a general 
disapproval and apprehension. . In the mother country Par- 
liament proceeded to the passage of the severe disciplinary 
measures of 1774. / 

The effect of this punitive legislation cannot be overesti- 
mated, for it convinced many colonists who had disapproved 
of the Boston vandalism that the greater guilt now lay on 
the side of Parliament. 'They look upon the chastisement 
of Boston to be purposely rigorous, and held up by way of 
intimidation to all America . . ." wrote Governor Penn 
from Philadelphia. "Their delinquency in destroying the 
East India Company's tea is lost in the attention given to 
what is here called the too severe punishment of shutting up 
the port, altering the Constitution, and making an Act, as 
they term it, screening the officers and soldiers shedding 
American blood." From this time on there occurred in the 
several provinces a contest for the control of public policy 
between the moderates on the one hand and the radicals or 
extremists on the other, the former receiving aid and com- 
fort from the royal officials and their circle of friends. This 
line of cleavage is unmistakable in the case of practically 
every province. 

The moderates as a group wanted to pay for the tea 
destroyed and to propose to Parliament an act of union 
which should automatically dispose of all controversial ques- 
tions for the future. The radicals were opposed to compro- 
mise and as a class desired a comprehensive and drastic 
boycott of Great Britain with which to exact from Parlia- 
ment recognition of the colonial claim to complete home 



176 NEW VIEWPOINTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

rule. Both parties were willing to make a trial of strength 
in an intercolonial congress; and after bitter contests in 
each province to control the personnel of the irregularly- 
elected delegations, the First Continental Congress assem- 
bled in Philadelphia in September, 1774. In this notable 
gathering the moderates discovered to their dismay that 
they were outnumbered ; and, in the disconsolate phrase of a 
Maryland merchant, "Adams, with his crew, and the haughty 
Sultans of the South juggled the whole conclave of the 
Delegates." Indeed, this extra-legal body, by adopting the 
Association for the establishment of non-importation, non- 
consumption and non-exportation, decreed that the mer- 
chants of America should sacrifice their trade for the benefit 
of a cause from which they had become alienated; and the 
radicals in Congress provided for spreading a network of 
committees over the continent to insure obedience to their 
decree. 

In the popular conventions called prior to the First Conti- 
nental Congress and in the provincial meetings that were 
held to ratify its doings, the people from the back-country- 
counties of many provinces were, for the first time, admitted 
to that full measure of representation which had long been 
denied them by the unequal system of apportionment in the 
colonial assemblies. Deeply stirred by the political slogans 
of the tidewater radicals, they ranged themselves by their 
side and lent momentum to an agitation that was hastening 
toward independence. In closely divided provinces like 
Pennsylvania and South Carolina their voice was undoubt- 
edly the decisive factor. 

The proceedings of the First Continental Congress were 
received with mixed feelings by the colonists. The mod- 
erates who had lingered in the popular movement in order to 
control it began to withdraw, although it required the out- 
break of hostilities at Lexington or even the Declaration 



THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION 177 

of Independence to convince some that their efforts could be 
of no avail. The merchants perforce acquiesced in the regu- 
lations of the Association, which, in the early months, were 
not without profit to them. The popular committees of the 
coast towns, formerly controlled by the merchants, began to 
fall into the hands of the democratic mechanic class. In 
New York, Boston and Philadelphia alike, "nobodies" and 
"unimportant persons" succeeded to power; and even in 
Savannah, Governor Wright declared that "the Parochial 
Committee are a Parcel of the Lowest People, Chiefly Car- 
penters, Shoemakers, Blacksmiths, &c. . . ." Flushed with 
success, the radical leaders busied themselves with consoli- 
dating their following in town and country through the 
creation of committees of observation and provincial com- 
mittees and conventions. Little wonder was it that, in this 
changed aspect of public affairs, a worthy minister of 
Charleston, S. C, should be dismissed by his congregation 
"for his audacity in . . . saying that mechanics and country 
clowns had no right to dispute about politics, or what kings, 
lords and commons had done," or that the Newport Mercury 
of September 26, 1774, in reporting the affair should add: 
"All such divines should be taught to know that mechanics 
and country clowns (infamously so called) are the real and 
absolute masters of king, lords, commons and priests. . . ." 
Events had reached a stage where the extremists in both 
countries were in control. What Chatham and Joseph Gallo- 
way might have adjusted to their mutual satisfaction could 
not be rationally discussed by North and Sam Adams. 
Under the circumstances it was inevitable that the policy of 
commercial coercion, adopted by the First Continental Con- 
gress, should soon be superseded by armed warfare as the 
weapon of the radicals, and that open rebellion should in 
turn give way to a struggle for independence. The throng- 
ing events of these later months are familiar enough in out- 



178 NEW VIEWPOINTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

line and need not be recounted here. The key to these 
times is to be found in the fact that the radical elements 
were a minority of the colonial population and that only 
through their effective organization and aggressive tactics 
could they hope to whip into line the great body of timid 
and indifferent people who lacked either organization or a 
definite program. 

The successive steps leading to independence were not 
taken without great mental travail, without suspicion of each 
other's motives, without sordid consultation of economic ad- 
vantage, or without doubt as to the rectitude of the course 
or fear of the consequences. Thousands of men of recog- 
nized social and business connections, who had been active in 
the earlier agitation for colonial home rule, opposed separa- 
tion and left their native land rather than be witnesses to its 
undoing. One of these earnestly warned his countrymen in 
April, 1776, that *'a set of men whom nobody knows . . . 
are attempting to hurry you into a scene of anarchy; their 
scheme of Independence is visionary; they know not them- 
selves what they mean by it." On the other hand, John 
Adams found food for sober reflection in the rejoicing of a 
horse- jockey neighbor of his : *'Oh ! Mr. Adams, what great 
things have you and your colleagues done for us ! . . . There 
are no courts of justice now in this Province and I hope 
there never will be another." Many a man of property, like 
the patriot Henry Laurens, wept when he listened to the 
reading of the Declaration of Independence, or else, like 
John Ross of Philadelphia, ''loved ease and Madeira much 
better than liberty and strife," and decided to be neutral in 
the struggle. 

The real significance of the American Revolution, how- 
ever, is not to be measured in terms of the conflicting emo- 
tions and purposes of those who, wittingly or unwittingly, 
helped to bring it about. What great issue in history has 



THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION 179 

not been scarred by sordid motives, personal antagonisms 
and unintelligent decisions? Fundamentally the American 
Revolution represented the refusal of a self-reliant people to 
permit their natural and normal energies to be confined 
against their will, whether by an irresponsible imperial gov- 
ernment or by the ruling minorities in their midst. 



The popular view of the Revolution as a great forensic 
controversy over abstract governmental rights will not bear 
close scrutiny. How could a people, who for ten years 
were not in agreement among themselves as to their aims 
and aspirations, be said to possess a common political philos- 
ophy? Before assuming that Otis or Dickinson or Thomson 
Mason spoke the voice of the colonists, the historian must 
first ascertain what class or section of the population each 
represented and how widespread its influence was. At best, 
an exposition of the political theories of the anti-parlia- 
mentary party is an account of their retreat from one stra- 
tegic position to another. Abandoning a view that based 
their liberties on charter grants, they appealed to their con- 
stitutional rights as Englishmen; and when that position 
became untenable, they invoked the doctrine of the rights of 
man. Likewise, their sincere devotion to the kingship was 
not open to question through ten years of controversy, when 
suddenly, a few months before the end, the English immi- 
grant Tom Paine in the pamphlet Common Sense jerked the 
bandages from their eyes and revealed the goal of republi- 
canism and independence at which they had already arrived 
in fact. Without discounting in any way the propagandist 
value attaching to popular shibboleths as such, it may as well 
be admitted that the colonists would have lost their case if 
the decision had turned upon an impartial consideration of 
the legal principles involved. 



i8o NEW VIEWPOINTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

Some of the difficulties in arriving at the truth concerning 
the Tories may also be apparent. Prior to 1774, it would be 
a distortion of the facts to picture the country as divided 
into two major parties, one representing blind attachment to 
the doctrine of parliamentary, supremacy and the other a 
blind partisanship of the doctrine of colonial home rule. 
Rather, the American colonists, united in desiring a large 
degree of colonial autonomy, differed in opinion as to what 
limitations of home rule were admissable and as to what 
methods of opposition were best adapted to secure the relief 
they desired. In this period every true American was a 
loyalist in the sense that he favored the permanent integrity 
of the British empire. Indeed, to regard "Tory" and "loy- 
alist" as equivalent terms would place the historian in the 
predicament of classing practically the entire colonial popu- 
lation as Tories until 1776. 

Excepting always the royal official class and its social con- 
nections, the terms "Tory" and "patriot" became intelligible 
for the first time when the First Continental Congress set 
forth the radical program in the Continental Association and 
stigmatized those who opposed the program as "enemies of 
American liberty." As the radical program advanced from 
commercial coercion to armed rebellion, the local committees 
applied a new test of patriotism, that of allegiance to the 
rebellion. It should be remembered, however, that the origi- 
nal object of this armed uprising was not independence but, 
as often in English history, a change in ministerial policy. 
With the Declaration of Independence patriotism became for 
the first time synonymous with disloyalty to England. Many 
men, like Daniel Dulany and Joseph Galloway, who may 
rightly be considered broad-minded patriotic Americans in 
the earlier years of the revolutionary contest, became Tories 
by the new definitions; and John Dickinson is the example 
of a man who narrowly escaped the infamy of not making 



THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION i8i 

up his mind in favor of independence as quickly as the 
majority of the Second Continental Congress. The disor- 
ders of the Confederation period were a justification of the 
decision made by the Tories ; but the reconstructive forces in 
American society vi^hich built a nationalistic republic under 
the Constitution have eloquently vindicated the choice made 
by the revolutionists. 



BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 

A history of the histories of the American Revolution should go 
far toward revealing the ideals and purposes which have governed 
historical writing in this country in the various periods of the past 
and should explain why the Revolution has had to be re-discovered 
and re-constructed from the source materials by the present genera- 
tion of historians. Sydney George Fisher has undertaken such a 
survey in his essay "The Legendary and Myth-Making Process in 
Histories of the American Revolution," originally published in the 
Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, vol. 51 (1912), 
PP- 53-76, and reprinted in the History Teacher's Magazine, vol. iv 
(i9i3)> PP- 63-71, and elsewhere. Pertinent information on the 
same subject may be found in the "Critical Essay on Authorities" 
in George Elliott Howard's Preliminaries of the Revolution, 1763- 
177s (in The American Nation: a History, vol. 8; New Yo'-k, 
1905)- 

Charles Altschul's study, The American Revolution in Our School 
Text-Books (New York, 1917), is excellent, so far as it goes, in 
showing the one-sided and misleading treatment of the American 
Revolution contained in the school histories of a generation ago. 

Reappraisement of the conflict by historians using scientific 
methods began in the nineties and the most valuable work along 
this line has been done since 1900, The pioneer labors of Charles 
McLean Andrews and Herbert Levi Osgood in showing that the 
history of the, colonies must be studied as an integral part of British 
imperial history were of basic importance to this reappraisement. 
Their point of view, arrived at as the result of independent studies, 
was first presented in the form of papers before the American 
Historical Association in 1898. See "American Colonial History, 
1690-1750" by Professor Andrews and "The Study of American 
Colonial History" by Professor Osgood in the Annual Report of 
the American Historical Association for 1898, pp. 46-60, 6z-72>' The 
actual, as contrasted with the fancied, effects of the British acts 
of trade and navigation on the colonies were first set forth by 
George Louis Beer in his monograph The Commercial Policy of 
England toward the American Colonies (New York, 1893), de- 
veloped by the English economist, W. J. Ashley, in his Surveys 



i82 NEW VIEWPOINTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

Historic and Economic (New York, 1900), pp. 309-360, and further 
amplified by George Louis Beer in a series of volumes entitled 
British Colonial Policy, 1754-1765 (New York, 1907), The Origins 
of the British Colonial System, 1 578-1660 (New York, 1908), and 
The Old Colonial System, 1660-17 54 (New York, 1912). 

The sectional and economic basis of colonial discontent, ignored 
or misunderstood by the earlier historians, has been the subject of 
careful study in such works as Mellen Chamberlain's "The Revolu- 
tion Impending" in Justin Winsor's Narrative and Critical History 
of America (8 v.; Boston, 1884-1889), vol. vi, pp. 1-112; William 
Wirt Henry's Patrick Henry; Life, Correspondence and Speeches 
(3 v.; New York, 1891) ; John Spencer Bassett's "The Regulators 
of North Carolina (1756-1771)" in the Annual Report of the 
American Historical Association for 1894, pp. 141-212; C. H. Lin- 
coln's The Revolutionary Movement in Pennsylvania, 1760-1776 
(Philadelphia, 1901) ; Carl L. Becker's The History of Political 
Parties in the Province of New York, 1760-1776 (Madison, 1909) ; 
H. J. Eckenrode's The Revolution in Virginia (Boston, 1916) ; 
Charles McLean Andrews's "The Boston Merchants and the Non- 
Importation Movement" in Publications of the Colonial Society of 
Massachusetts, vol. xix (1917), PP. 159-259; Arthur Meier 
Schlesinger's The Colonial Merchants and the American Revolution, 
1763-1776 (New York, 1918) ; and Edith Anna Bailey's InHuences 
toward Radicalism in Connecticut, 17 54-177 5 (Northampton, 1920). 

Some light hag been thrown upon the organization and methods 
of the popular party by Henry B. Dawson's The Sons of Liberty in 
New York (New York, 1859) ; Richard Frothingham's The Rise of 
the Republic of the United States (Boston, 1881);^ and E. D. 
Collins's "Committees of Correspondence of the American Revolu- 
tion" in the Annual Report of the American Historical Association 
for 1901, vol. i, pp. 243-271. 

The activities and views of the loyalist element of the population 
received partisan justification in such early works as Lorenzo 
Sabine's Biographical Sketches of Loyalists of the American Revo- 
lution (2 v.; Boston, 1864) and Egerton Ryerson's Loyalists of 
America and Their Times (2 v.; Toronto, 1880), and have since 
been studied from a disinterested viewpoint by George E, Ellis in 
"The Loyalists" in Winsor's Narrative and Critical History (cited 
above), vol. vii, pp. 185-214, by Moses Coit Tyler in The Literary 
History of the American Revolution, 1763-1783 (2 v.; New York, 
1897), by Alexander C. Flick in Loyalism in New York in the 
American Revolution (New York, 1901), and by Claude Halstead 
Van Tyne in Loyalists in the American Revolution (New York, 
1902). 

Religious and sectarian influences in the revolutionary movement 
have received attention in W. P. Breed's Presbyterians and the 
Revolution (Philadelphia, 1876); Mellen Chamberlain's /o/tw /Irfaww, 
the Statesman of the American Revolution, with Other Essays 
(Boston, 1884) ; George E. Ellis's "The Sentiment of Independence, 
Its Growth and Consummation" in Winsor's Narrative and Critical 
History (cited above), vol. vi, pp. 231-2$$; Arthur Lyon Cross's 



THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION 183 

The Anglican Episcopate and the American Colonies (Cambridge, 
1902) ; Martin I. J. Griffin's Catholics and the American Revolution 
(3 v.; Ridley Park, Pa., 1907); and Claude Halstead Van Tyne's 
"Influence of the Clergy, and of Religious and Sectarian Forces, on 
the American Revolution" in the Atmrican Historical Review, vol. 
xix (1913), pp. 44-64- 

The best general summaries of the American Revolution today 
are Sydney George Fisher's The Struggle for American Independ- 
ence (2 V. ; Philadelphia, 1908) ; Edward Channing's A History of 
the United States, vol. iii (New York, 1912) ; Carl Lotus Becker's 
Beginnings of the American People (Boston, 1912), chaps, v-vi. A 
forthcoming book by Clarence W. Alvord under the projected title 
of Imperial Muddlers and the American Revolution: an Essay about 
Propaganda and Politics promises to be of great importance in this 
connection. Of the English accounts the best continues to be W. 
E. H. Lecky's History of England in the Eighteenth Century (8 v.; 
London, 1878- 1890), vol. iii, chap, xii, edited in a separate volume 
by J. A. Woodburn under the title The American Revolution, 1763- 
1783 (New York, 1898). 

An important conference devoted to a discussion of our present 
knowledge of the American Revolution was held in conjunction 
with the recent meeting of the American Historical Association at 
St. Louis (December, 1921). The principal papers were presented 
by Professor Van Tyne and Professor Alvord. 



CHAPTER VIII 

ECONOMIC ASPECTS OF THE MOVEMENT FOR THE 
CONSTITUTION 



In the year 17S1 the Articles of Confederation were rati- 
fied by the last of the thirteen states and went into effect as 
the first written constitution of the federal union. In the 
same year occurred the battle of Yorktown, which from a 
military point of view assured independence to the strug- 
gling colonies. The war was practically at an end. Emerging 
from six years of armed conflict, the young republic had to 
solve even more difficult problems in the six years of peace 
that followed. 

The population was deeply affected by post bclluui unrest, 
and public life gave evidence of that lowering of moral tone 
that seems an inevitable aftermath of a great war. The 
frame of government under which the new nation made its 
start had been drawn up by men laboring under a desperate 
fear of centralized power as embodied in the British govern- 
ment and who were determined that the new federal gov- 
ernment, notwithstanding its different source of authority, 
should exercise as little power as possible. Under the 
circumstances the Articles of Confederation could hardly be 
more than a feeble instrument. All essential powers re- 
mained with the individual states ; and it was only by virtue 
of an extraordinary majority vote that the general govern- 
ment might perform certain carefully stipulated functions in 
behalf of all the states. Obviously, such a government was 

184 



MOVEMENT FOR THE CONSTITUTION 185 

unfitted to cope with the social and political disturbances 
that were to mark the period. 

The instability of the times were far-reaching in its effects 
and pervaded not only the operations of the state and federal 
governments but also the life of the people in their social 
and business relations. The ill-paid revolutionary army, 
seething with unrest, was a prolific source of uneasiness. 
The main body of the troops were encamped at Newburg on 
the Hudson, and they faced a return to their home and fami- 
Hes, after their arduous campaigns, ''without a settlement of 
their accounts, or a farthing of money in their pockets." 
Only the personal intervention of Washington at a critical 
juncture prevented the consummation of a plot to effect a 
forcible presentation of their claims to Congress. A band 
of mutinous Pennsylvania troops stationed at Lancaster did 
indeed march on Philadelphia and frightened Congress into 
changing the seat of government to Princeton. 

On the trans-Alleghany frontier the spirit of lawlessness 
also stalked abroad. For three years backwoodsmen living 
in what is now eastern Tennessee defied their parent state of 
North Carolina and, on their own cognizance, demanded 
admission into the union as the State of Franklin. The 
integrity of Virginia was likewise menaced by a movement 
for independent statehood among the settlers of Kentucky. 
Congress sought to promote further settlement of the west- 
ern country under national supervision by the Ordinances of 
1784 and 1785 ; but none but the most daring were willing to 
brave the perils of frontier life without military protection 
against the savages. 

The public finances were in unbelievably bad shape. Con- 
tinental paper money had depreciated to a point where an 
enterprising barber found it a matter of economy to paper 
his shop with scrip; and the general disgust resulted in the 
coining of a phrase that has survived to our own time — "not 



i86 NEW VIEWPOINTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

worth a continental." Lacking taxing power, the Confed- 
eration government was unable to pay the interest on the 
national debt, and the common selling price of national 
securities in good markets varied from one-tenth to one-sixth 
of their face value, sometimes falling as low as one to twenty. 
State securities were depreciated almost as badly. 

Commerce and business were in a languishing condition. 
The lack of a stable circulating medium was a contributing 
factor but other conditions were equally unfavorable to the 
conduct of business. It proved impossible for the feeble 
Confederation government to re-establish the old commer- 
cial relations with Great Britain and the British Empire, 
whence had sprung the abundant prosperity of the colonial 
merchants and shipbuilders. Spain, the mistress of Louisi- 
ana and the Floridas, spurned all efforts to find an outlet for 
our inland trade through opening up the mouth of the 
Mississippi. The infant manufactures which had sprung 
up during the war were being destroyed by the price-cutting 
competition of British manufacturers; and the Confedera- 
tion lacked power to stimulate domestic industries by a 
protective tariff. Strangest of all to Americans of today, 
commercial intercourse among the states of the union was 
embarrassed and impeded by restrictions and tariffs imposed 
by the various states upon each other ; and again Congress 
was impotent to take any measures to improve the situation. 

The men who suffered the direct and immediate effects of 
the derangement of business and commerce were the com- 
mon people throughout the states, who had no surplus upon 
which to fall back in times of financial stringency. In the 
early years of the Confederation period some parts of the 
country had enjoyed a degree of prosperity; but each suc- 
ceeding year brought an increasing measure of hard times. 
By the years 1785 and 1786 the country was in a condition 
of pronounced depression. Money was scarce, crops were 



MOVEMENT FOR THE CONSTITUTION 187 

rotting in the ground, and poor people were reduced to the 
expedient of barter. The debtor classes everywhere turned 
to their state governments for relief from the scarcity of 
specie. If the cause of their difficulties was the lack of 
money, then, they reasoned, let the government manufacture 
more money and put an end to the hardships of the poor. 
However naive this solution may seem to us today, we 
should remember that it was the natural reaction of a people 
who found themselves in desperate economic straits without 
any other proposals for their relief. /Along with these paper 
money demands went others which, in the language of 
Luther Martin of Maryland, were designed *'to prevent the 
wealthy creditor and the moneyed man from totally destroy- 
ing the poor, though even industrious, debtor." Of this 
class were measures to suspend the collection of debts (''stay 
laws") and acts declaring cattle and produce the equivalent 
of money when offered in payment of debts. 

In all the states political contests began to take the form 
of struggles between the debtor and creditor classes — that is, 
between the small farmers and mechanic classes on the one 
hand and the merchant and capitalist group on the other. 
The paper money men carried the legislatures of seven 
states in elections of 1786, being unsuccessful only in Vir- 
ginia, Delaware, Maryland, Connecticut, New Hampshire 
and Massachusetts. In New Hampshire several hundred 
men, armed with muskets, swords and staves, entered Exeter 
where the legislature was sitting and demanded a release 
from taxes and an issue of paper money. The lower house 
wavered but, the Senate standing firm, the rebels were routed 
the next day. The most alarming uprising took place in 
Massachusetts, a revolt that took six months to suppress. 
The adjournment of the state legislature in July, 1786, with- 
out authorizing any measures of relief for debtors led to 
mob demonstrations which prevented the courts from sitting 



i88 NEW VIEWPOINTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

in several of the larger districts. Encouraged by these suc- 
cesses, a motley army of insurgents formed under the leader- 
ship of Daniel Shays, a veteran of Bunker Hill, and they set 
forth to plunder the national arsenal at Springfield as pre- 
paratory to further measures. As the legislature was not in 
session arid there were no funds to pay the state troops, a 
number of wealthy gentlemen loaned the necessary funds 
for this purpose ; and prompt action on the part of General 
Lincoln prevented the breaking out of a civil war. 

Echoes of the Shays uprising rang throughout the coun- 
try. What had occurred in Massachusetts might easily be 
repeated, with more disastrous results, in other states. 
Moreover, the troubles in Massachusetts had been accom- 
panied by the enunciation of doctrines in some quarters that 
far outran paper money vagaries. Mass meetings in various 
towns and counties had broached the doctrines that taxation 
ought to be eliminated as an unnecessary burden, and that 
all property should be held in common since all had made 
sacrifices to save it from England. The very foundations of 
society seemed threatened. Washington, who cannot be 
regarded as an alarmist, expressed the thought of many 
responsible and conservative people when he wrote : ''There 
are combustibles in every State which a spark might set fire 
to. ... I feel . . . infinitely more than I can express to 
you, for the disorders which have arisen in these States. 
Good God ! Who, besides a Tory, could have foreseen, or a 
Briton, predicted them?" 

II 

The instability and tumult of the times drove home to the 
substantial classes of the population the imperative need for 
a stronger form of national government. Some of these 
men were animated by motives of disinterested patriotism, 
their love of country being outraged by the affronts offered 



MOVEMENT FOR THE CONSTITUTION 189 

America by foreign nations, in particular by the fact that 
Great Britain and Spain continued to occupy western terri- 
tory which had been ceded to the United States by the treaty 
of peace of 1783. Others were by temperament repelled by 
the radicalism and lawlessness that prevailed under the 
Articles and were inclined to favor any movement which 
promised a strong hand at the helm of state. Religious and 
racial sympathies were also an indirect and not negligible 
factor in consolidating the opposing groups in their attitude 
toward the Articles of Confederation. But of all the motives 
that caused men to strive for a more vigorous national 
government the most potent was undoubtedly the desire to 
re-establish conditions under which property rights and con- 
tracts might be secure, investments be safe, and commerce 
and business prosper. 

It is with the economic aspects of the movement for the 
Constitution that the present discussion is concerned since 
this phase of the subject has, until recently, been largely 
neglected by the historians. No discriminating reader need 
feel that such a presentation carries with it the imputation of 
ignoble or unworthy motives to the Fathers of the Constitu- 
tion ; rather, it forms an illuminating commentary on the 
fact that intelligent self-interest, whether conscious or in- 
stinctive, is one of the motive forces of human progress. 
Individuals may indeed have joined in the movement with 
no other prompting than a desire for personal gain irrespec- 
tive of the public welfare; but the group as a whole un- 
doubtedly were moved by the conviction that the changes 
they advocated would benefit the nation at large as well as 
their own personal economic station. 

Under the Articles of Confederation men of substance 
and position found their property holdings imperiled and the 
gates to economic advancement closed. Persons who had 
speculated in western lands and were holding them for a rise 



I90 NEW VIEWPOINTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

found that their holdings remained at an abnormally low 
price because of the weakness of the Confederation govern- 
ment, the lack of proper military protection on the frontier, 
and the uncertainty as to the legal title. Holders of the 
depreciated public securities could have no respect for a 
government which had not only failed to provide for the 
eventual redemption of its obligations but was unable even 
to make the current interest payments. Men with money to 
lend found the avenues to profitable investment blocked by 
the general derangement of business and the action of the 
state legislatures in annulling private contracts and issuing 
worthless paper currency. The merchants, manufacturers 
and shipbuilders were likewise afifected by the inability of 
the government to enact protective tariffs and navigation 
laws or to secure favorable commercial treaties with foreign 
nations. This general contempt for the government was 
fully shared by the great slave owners of the South who 
believed that the government should possess adequate power 
to insure the return of runaway slaves and to quell servile 
insurrections. Indeed, the southern planters were as vitally 
concerned in maintaining order against the possibility of 
slave revolts as the creditors of Massachusetts were in pre- 
venting recurrences of Shays' rebellion. 

The lodestone of a common material interest inevitably 
drew together the men of large economic interests irrespec- 
tive of state boundaries or other artificial distinctions, and 
consolidated them into a compact group opposed to the poor 
and the debtor classes. Efforts had been made at various 
times to strengthen the Articles with amendments conferring 
commercial and taxation powers upon Congress, but these 
attempts had all been defeated by the requirement that any 
changes must be accepted by act of all the state legislatures. 
In 1782 the New York legislature had proposed a convention 
to revise the Articles, and the suggestion had been repeated 



MOVEMENT FOR THE CONSTITUTION 191 

by the legislature of Massachusetts three years later, but 
without effect. 

The train of events which culminated in the meeting of 
the Constitutional Convention was inspired and set in motion 
by men aroused to action by the commercial chaos that 
reigned in the country. In 1785 commissioners of Virginia 
and Maryland came together for the purpose of adjusting 
questions involving jurisdiction over the navigation of the 
Potomac River and Chesapeake Bay. It quickly developed 
that the question of trading regulations was one that affected 
the neighboring states as well ; and Maryland proposed that 
Pennsylvania and Delaware should be invited to participate 
in a subsequent meeting. Virginia, however, enlarged the 
scope of the proposed conference by formally calling upon 
all the states to send delegates to Annapolis in 1786 to 
"consider how far a uniform system in their commercial 
relations may be necessary to their common interest and 
their permanent harmony." 

The response of the states to this invitation was disap- 
pointing, for only five states were represented at the Annap- 
olis convention. No definite action affecting commercial 
relations could be taken under the circumstances; but the 
meeting went on record in favor of another convention, to 
be held in Philadelphia the following year, to "devise such 
further Provisions as shall appear to them necessary to 
render the Constitution of the Federal Government ade- 
quate to the exigencies of the Union." The interesting 
phraseology of this resolution was the work of Alexander 
Hamilton. The resolution further provided that any changes 
recommended by the proposed convention should be adopted 
in the manner provided by the Articles of Confederation, 
namely, ratification by the legislatures of all the states. The 
Confederation Congress ignored the resolution of this extra- 
legal body for a time; but when it became clear that the 



192 NEW VIEWPOINTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

states were planning to act upon it anyway, Congress has- 
tened to lend its sanction to the gathering. 

To what extent the large economic interests directed and 
controlled the selection of delegates to the Constitutional 
Convention is necessarily a matter of conjecture except as 
indirect evidence may shed light on the matter. ^ In every 
state the delegates were elected by the legislature and it is 
difficult, if not impossible, to ascertain what arguments and 
pressures were brought to bear to influence the members in 
their action. ' According to John Adams, 'The Federal Con- 
vention was the work of the commercial people in the sea- 
port towns, of the slave-holding states, of the officers of the 
revolutionary army, and the property holders everywhere"; 
and this judgment of a distinguished contemporary is largely 
borne out by the recent researches of Dr. Charles A. Beard. 

Of the fifty-five members who attended the convention at 
one time or other not one represented in his own personal 
economic interests the small farming or mechanic classes. 
On the contrary the great majority, at least five-sixths of the 
membership, were directly and personally interested in the 
outcome of their labors through their ownership of property, 
real or personal, and were, to a greater or less extent, eco- 
nomic beneficiaries of the adoption of the Constitution. 
While detailed figures must necessarily be inexact, it is 
worth noting that speculative investments in land were rep- 
resented by at least fourteen members. Public security in- 
terests were extensively represented among the members in 
sums varying from negligible amounts up to more than 
$100,000. The precise number of public creditors in the 
convention will probably never be known, but the names of 
no less than forty appeared upon the records of the United 
States Treasury Department when Hamilton's funding 
scheme was carried into operation shortly after the adoption 
of the Constitution. Personalty in the form of money 



MOVEMENT FOR THE CONSTITUTION 193 

loaned at interest was represented by at least twenty- four 
members. The mercantile, manufacturing and shipping in- 
terests had spokesmen in at least eleven members. Fifteen 
or more members were slaveholders. Thus the membership 
of the convention consisted not of political visionaries or 
closet philosophers but of men of the world determined, 
above all things else, to erect a government that would be 
effective and workable from a practical man's point of view. 

Ill 

The Constitutional Convention held its sessions in secret; 
and not until the publication of the official journal by act of 
Congress in 181 9 was the bare record of its proceedings 
divulged. Many more years passed before James Madison's 
notes on the debates were made public. From these accounts 
and other fragmentary versions of the convention's activities 
the historians have been able to reconstruct a picture of the 
stormy controversies and grudging concessions that marked 
the various stages of the framing of the Constitution. To 
quote Professor Max Farrand, the completed Constitution 
was "neither a work of divine origin, nor *the greatest work 
that was ever struck off at a given time by the brain and 
purpose of man,' but a practical, workable document . . . 
planned to meet certain immediate needs and modified to 
suit the exigencies of the situation." 

The document contained every protection which the inter- 
ests of the conservative classes had demanded for the safe- 
guarding of their property rights. The structure of the new 
government with its intricate system of checks and balances 
was designed to prevent the populace from giving free rein 
to its whims and passions. Of the three principal depart- 
ments of the government the qualified voters in the states 
were permitted to vote directly for only one house of Con- 
gress; and ample provision was made by which the will of 



194 NEW VIEWPOINTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

the popular house might be defeated. More specifically, 
provisions were inserted for conferring full revenue powers 
upon Congress and for making the debts of the Confedera- 
tion government an obligation upon the new government. 
Congress was further given plenary power to raise and sup- 
port military and naval forces, for the protection of the 
country against both foreign and domestic foes. Over for- 
eign and interstate commerce Congress was given substan- 
tially complete control, which made it possible for the new 
government to enact protective tariffs and to prevent the 
erection of tariff barriers between the states. The new 
government also received unrestricted powers of treaty- 
making with ample authority to enforce treaties when made. 
Not less significant were the clauses which forbade the 
states to issue paper currency, or to make anything but gold 
and silver legal tender, or to make laws impairing the obliga- 
tion of contracts. By such provisions conditions were 
assured under which holders of public securities might be 
paid in full, social disturbances quelled, the western frontier 
protected, advantages secured in dealing with foreign nations, 
manufactures fostered, and the financial follies of the states 
prevented. 

But it was one thing for the Philadelphia Convention to 
agree upon such a document in secret session, and another 
to secure the acceptance of these sweeping provisions by the 
country after public consideration. Technically, the instru- 
ment framed by the Convention was only a revision of the 
Articles of Confederation, and hence must go through the 
regular process prescribed for alterations and amendments of 
the Confederation government. But the members of the 
Convention early recognized the impossibility of securing 
approval by the legislatures of all the states; and so they 
decided to disregard the existing legal machinery, and they 
put forth a document which provided for its own method 



MOVEMENT FOR THE CONSTITUTION 195 

of ratification. The proposed Constitution declared that the 
states should signify their approval through special conven- 
tions chosen upon the express issue, and when nine state 
conventions had ratified the instrument, it should go into 
effect among the states so acting. HThe whole procedure 
was a departure from the provisions of the fundamental law 
under which the Convention had been called ; and this action 
of the Convention, from a legal point of view, cannot be 
regarded otherwise than unlawful and revolutionary. ; As 
one distinguished jurist has remarked, if such an act had 
been committed by Julius or Napoleon, it would have been 
pronounced a coup d'etat. 

The future of the Constitution now hung upon the deci- 
sion of the state ratifying conventions. From November, 
1787, to the following July a campaign of continental pro- 
portions was carried on. Since the Constitution was not, 
submitted to direct popular ratification, as are state constitu- 
tions today, the best indication that we have of popular senti- 
ment is found in the selection of delegates to the state 
conventions. But here allowances must be made for the 
fact that perhaps one-third of the adult white male popula- 
tion were excluded from the franchise by the property 
qualifications that prevailed in every state. In New York 
alone a temporary exception was made, and all adult men 
were allowed to vote. A considerable proportion of the 
qualified voters in every state abstained from voting through 
indifference or ignorance; and in general it seems highly 
probable that not more than one-fifth or one-fourth of the 
adult white males participated in the election of delegates to 
the state conventions. 

The arguments urged for and against ratification were 
much the same in the several states ; but each state campaign 
had its local peculiarities due to the special social, economic 
and geographic conditions. In Massachusetts the eastern 



196 NEW VIEWPOINTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

counties with their dominant commercial and financial in- 
terests favored ratification, while the farmers of the interior, 
who had recruited the ranks of Shays' army, fought it. In 
Rhode Island wealth and commerce supported the Constitu- 
tion but were outweighed by the agricultural class who were 
advocates of "cheap money." The forces opposed to ratifi- 
cation in Connecticut were very feeble but drew their 
strength from those parts of the state that contained the 
debtor class and from the men who had sympathized with 
Shays' rebellion. The rural counties of New York were in 
opposition while the business section of the state in and about 
New York City were ardent ratificationists. New Jersey was 
favorable to the new instrument because of the trading re- 
strictions that had been imposed upon her by New York and 
Pennsylvania but a note of dissent was heard from the 
debtor and paper money regions. In Pennsylvania the mer- 
chant and propertied classes united in supporting the Consti- 
tution in face of the opposition of the Scotch-Irish and 
German radicals of the backcountry, who had dominated 
state politics since revolutionary times. In Virginia the 
long-standing social and economic antagonism between east 
and west, between the great planters and merchants of the 
tidewater and the small farmers of the interior, reappeared. 
Eighty per cent of tidewater Virginia, containing the monied 
and commercial interests, supported the Constitution whereas 
seventy-four per cent of the back-country voted against it. 
Much the same alignment was found in the Carolinas, with 
the agrarian element in an actual majority in North Carolina. 
Georgia gave a speedy endorsement to the Constitution be- 
cause, as the southern frontier state, the people felt the 
imperative need of a strong general government to assist in 
warding off Indian attacks. West of the Alleghanies the 
people were a unit in opposing ratification. 

John Marshall, an active supporter of ratification and 



MOVEMENT FOR THE CONSTITUTION 197 

later Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, 
wrote in his Life of Washington some years later: "So 
balanced were the parties in some of them [the states] that 
even after the subject had been discussed for a considerable 
time, the fate of the constitution could scarcely be conjec- 
tured; and so small in many instances, was the majority in 
its favor, as to afford strong ground for the opinion that, 
had the influence of character been removed, the intrinsic 
merits of the instrument would not have secured its adoption. 
Indeed it is scarcely to be doubted that in some of the adopt- 
ing states a majority of the people were in the opposition. 
In all of them, the numerous amendments which were pro- 
posed demonstrate the reluctance with which the new govern- 
ment was accepted ; and that a dread of dismemberment, not 
an approbation of the particular system under discussion, had 
induced an acquiescence in it." 

In the words of Woodrow Wilson, the friends of the 
Constitution had on their side the tremendous advantage of 
"a strong and intelligent class, possessed of unity and in- 
formed by a conscious solidarity of material interest." But 
"economic determinism" was not all to be found on this side 
of the contest. Although the foes of adoption had strong 
theoretical grounds for fearing a highly centralized federal 
government, they also had definite pecuniary reasons for con- 
demning the many restrictions imposed upon popular gov- 
ernment in general and upon the authority of the state 
governments in particular. It was Alexander Hamilton's 
cynical comment that the new frame of government encoun- 
tered the "opposition of all men much in debt, who will not 
wish to see a government established, one object of which is 
to restrain the means of cheating creditors." It is a mis- 
taken notion that all of the distinguished men of the country 
were to be found in the ranks of the ratificationists, for 
among the active opponents were such men as Patrick 



198 NEW VIEWPOINTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

Henry, Richard Henry Lee and Edmund Randolph of Vir- 
ginia, Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts, and George Clinton 
of New York. The last two later occupied the office of vice- 
president of the United States. 

Although the enemies of ratification were poorly organ- 
ized, it appears that in the case of four states — New 
Hampshire, Massachusetts, New York and Virginia — the 
conventions were, at the time of their election, either opposed 
to the Constitution or else so closely divided that their action 
was in doubt. A change of ten votes in Massachusetts, six 
in New Hampshire, six in Virginia and two in New York 
would have prevented ratification by the conventions of 
those states. In North Carolina the Constitution was re- 
jected by vote of the convention; and the authorities in 
Rhode Island refused to summon a convention to consider it. 
Both states failed to take part in the first presidential 
election. 

On the basis of the new fundamental law the new national 
government was in due form established. The bitter ani- 
mosities which had characterized the struggle over ratifica- 
tion subsided and were soon forgotten. All elements united 
in support of the Constitution and for the moment the 
political waters seemed tranquil. But the underlying eco- 
nomic and social conflict could not be so easily stilled. 
Forced to assume new forms by the changed circumstances, 
the commercial and monied interests on the one hand and the 
agrarian and debtor interests on the other prepared to wage 
battle for the control of the new government. Here we find 
the fundamental explanation of the rise of political parties 
during Washington's presidency. 

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 

The chief authority on the economic phases of the movement for 
the Constitution is Charles A. Beard, who presented the results oi 



MOVEMENT FOR THE CONSTITUTION 199 

his researches in his work; An Economic Interpretation of the 
Constitution of the United States (New York, 1913). 

Most of the early historians dealing with the movement for the 
Constitution had largely overlooked the economic conflict involved, 
one conspicuous exception being John Marshall who in discussing 
the matter in his Life of George Washington (5 v.; Philadelphia, 
1804-1807) showed a keen appreciation of the economic motivation 
of events. John Bach McMaster in his History of the' People of the 
United States (8 v.; New York, 1883-1913), vol. i, and Andrew Cun- 
ningham McLaughlin in his The Confederation and the Constitution 
(in The American Nation: a History, vol. 10; New York, 1905) 
deal with social and economic conditions in this period, but their 
treatments are largely surveys of outward events. 

Progress toward an economic and social explanation of events 
began to be made with the appearance of a notable series of mono- 
graphic studies which had been worked out independently of each 
other: James C. Welling's "The States'-Rights Conflict over the 
Public Lands" in the Papers of the American Historical Association 
(New York, 1889), vol. iii, pp. 167-188; Orin Grant Libby's The 
Geographical Distribution of the Vote of the Thirteen States on the 
Federal Constitution, 1787-1788 (Madison, 1894) ; Samuel B. Hard- 
ing's The Contest over the Ratification of the Federal Constitution 
in the State of Massachusetts (Cambridge, 1896) ; F. G. Bates's 
Rhode Island and the Formation of the Union (New York, 1898) ; 
William A. Schaper's "Sectionalism and Representation in South 
Carolina" in the Annual Report of the American Historical Associa- 
tion for 1900, vol. i, pp. 237-463; and Charles Henry Ambler's Sec- 
tionalism in Virginia from 1776 to 1861 (Chicago, 1910). 

The appearance of Dr. Beard's volume in 1913, at a time when 
popular criticism of the courts was rife, caused it to be greeted 
with a storm of criticism and protest. As a matter of fact, his 
chief contribution to the subject beyond what had already been done 
lay in his painstaking analysis of the economic interests of the mem- 
bers of the Constitutional Convention and his emphasis upon the 
public security holdings of members of the Federal and state ratify- 
ing conventions. Perhaps the most incisive scholarly criticism of 
Dr. Beard's book was made by E. S. Corwin in the History Teacher's 
Magazine for February, 1914. Dr. Beard's answer to his critics may 
be found in his Economic Origins of Jeifersonian Democracy (New 
York, 1915), pp. 1-9- 

The point of view set forth by Dr. Beard has been generally 
accepted by scholars who have written on the Confederation period 
since 1913 ; for example, Allen Johnson's Union and Democracy 
(Boston, 1915), chap, ii; Homer C. Hockett's Western Influences on 
Political Parties to 1825 (Columbus, 1917), PP- 27-40; and Frank 
Tracy Carlton's Organized Labor in American History (New York, 
1920), pp. 45-52. 



CHAPTER IX 

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF JACKSONIAN DEMOCRACY 

The habit of the earlier historians of thinking of American 
history as a chronicle of political and constitutional develop- 
ment has given currency to a very misleading conception of 
"Jacksonian Democracy." To the ordinary reader of history 
the phrase refers to a violent change in American govern- 
ment and politics effected during the years from 1829 to 
1837 by an irresponsible and erratic military chieftain at the 
head of the newly enfranchised and untutored masses. Not- 
w^ithstanding the changing emphasis of historical writing in 
late years this notion has tended to persist, perhaps through 
a natural desire of the human kind to seek a simple explana- 
tion of events rather than a complex one, and perhaps also 
because of our tendency to picture a superman or a malign 
genius — as the case may be — as the moving force in historic 
changes. 

The researches that have been conducted into the life of 
the people of the United States in the twenties and the 
thirties have thrown an entirely different light upon the 
democratic upheaval of that period. The great changes that 
occurred are to be regarded as a transformation of American 
society that made itself manifest not only in the sphere of 
government but in almost every other phase of human 
thought and endeavor. Jackson himself was a product, 
rather than the creator, of the new democratic spirit, for he 
rode into power on a tide of forces that had been gathering 
strength for more than a decade and which he had done 

200 



SIGNIFICANCE OF JACKSONIAN DEMOCRACY 201 

little or nothing to bring into being. It will appear that the 
new democracy was "J^cksonian" only to the extent that 
Jackson stamped the political phase of the movement with 
the imprint of his personality, lending it certain picturesque 
characteristics and dramatic qualities. 

In the present discussion the origins and development of 
this new spirit in American life will be traced in the period 
of a , decade or so before Jackson's elevation to the presi- 
dency, as well as during his term of office ; and its liberating 
and liberalizing effects will be followed in the rise of a new 
society west of the Alleghanies, in the development of a 
dynamic labor movement in the East, in the literary, social 
and religious aspirations of the people, and in the profound 
changes in political organization and governmental practice. 



The growth of the West affords one vital approach to an 
understanding of the new democratic outlook of America. 
Reference has been made elsewhere in this volume to the 
fact that in the first quarter of the century the whole physical 
basis of American life was changed by the expansion of the 
American population across the Alleghanies. In 1800 only 
one- twentieth of the people lived west of the mountains ; but 
when Jackson was inaugurated president, one-third of them 
were to be found in that region. Meantime the population 
of the nation had increased from five and one-third millions 
to thirty millions; so that the West in 1829 contained almost 
twice as many people as the entire United States at the 
beginning of the century. In the train of western migration 
there sprang up mighty frontier commonwealths, increasing 
the original number of states from thirteen to twenty-two. 
By the time Jackson entered the presidency the entire 
domain east of the Mississippi river had been carved into 
states save only Michigan, Wisconsin and Florida, and be- 



202 NEW VIEWPOINTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

yond the great river Louisiana and Missouri had won accept- 
ance as members of the Union. 

All the conditions of life in the West made for the pro- 
motion of equalitarian ideas. The democracy of the frontier 
was not derived from tlie reading of philosophical disquisi- 
tions but grew out of the hardy experiences of the pioneers 
in wresting the land from savage foe and the primitive 
resistance of Nature. A man was deemed a man if he could 
survive the struggle for existence, irrespective of his social 
antecedents ; and land was so abundant that every man 
might attain a position of economic independence. Political 
equality was thus based upon a real equality. It was a 
democracy as yet without organization, one that depended 
upon personal leadership. The man most successful as an 
Indian fighter was expected to make the best judge or the 
best Congressman. It was a democracy opposed to an 
ofiice-holding class and moved by a deep conviction that any 
upstanding man was competent to hold any office. Yet on 
clearcut political issues the people were independent and 
intelligent. Their political code had as its main tenets : 
political democracy, equality of economic opportunity, and 
opposition to monopoly and special privilege. 

Distinction between north and south did not as yet exist 
in the trans- Alleghany region. The difficulties of the pio- 
neer of the Old Northwest in hewing a clearing out of the 
hard woods of his region were matched by the trials of the 
Mississippi pioneer in wrestling with the pine forests of the 
south. 

The West with all its crudenesses and virtues came to 
play a large part in American life in the twenties and the 
thirties, deepening the channels of democracy and driving 
through them a roaring tide that threatened to inundate the 
banks. Henry Clay of Kentucky, Thomas H. Benton of 
Missouri and Andrew Jackson of Tennessee were all products 



SIGNIFICANCE OF JACKSONIAN DEMOCRACY 203 

of western conditions, though with curious variations, and 
by their tremendous energy and personal gifts they helped 
to impress the ideals and prejudices of the frontier upon the 
national government. 

The life of the westerner was crowded with the exigencies 
of daily living and secondarily with the political problems 
which the necessity for self-government thrust constantly 
upon his attention. He had as yet no contribution to make 
to creative literature or to the fine art of living. The life of 
the frontier democracy bore the promise of original contri- 
butions but its expression had to await the oncoming of the 
children and grandchildren of the first pioneers. 

II 

While democracy was working out its destiny in the forests 
of the Mississippi valley, the men left behind in the eastern 
cities were engaging in a struggle to establish conditions of 
equality and social well-being adapted to their special cir- 
cumstances. To understand the difficulties and oppressive 
conditions against which this movement of protest was 
directed, it is necessary to consider the changed circum- 
stances of the life of the common man in the new industrial 
centers of the East since the opening years of the nineteenth 
century. Since the days of Jefferson's embargo, New Eng- 
land and the Middle Atlantic states had been undergoing a 
transformation from a section of predominant agricultural 
and shipping interests to a section increasingly devoted to 
manufacturing. This growth of manufacturing marked the 
advent of the factory system in American history; and while 
manufacturing'was conducted only in scattered districts and 
upon a comparatively small scale as measured by modern 
standards, it profoundly influenced the lives of the working 
class immediately concerned. 

Prior to the introduction of the factory system, such 



204 NEW VIEWPOINTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

manufacturing as was known in America had been carried 
on under the "domestic system." Each employer or "mas- 
ter" worked side by side with his journeymen and appren- 
tices, sharing their hard conditions and long hours; and 
every workingman expected in time to become an employer. 
There was no sharp division between capital and labor, and 
no distinct and permanent laboring class. With the applica- 
tion of machinery to work that had hitherto been performed 
by hand, the situation of the workingman changed radically. 
Under the new conditions the mass of hired labor shifted 
from the farm and the village to the trades and the manu- 
factures in the towns in the first quarter of the century. 
The customary workday on the farm from "sun to sun" or 
"dark to dark" was carried over into the factory and the 
trades notwithstanding the greatly altered conditions of 
labor, and women and children were employed at the same 
ruinously long hours as the men. 

An estimate of the average workday in the manufacturing 
districts was made in 1839 by James Montgomery, super- 
intendent of the York Factories at Saco, Maine, who calcu- 
lated that the day's work at Lowell averaged a little more 
than twelve hours the year around for six days a week, and 
that in many of the Middle Atlantic and southern states the 
ordinary working hours approached thirteen a day. There 
is abundant evidence to show that these figures may be 
regarded as a conservative statement of the conditions pre- 
vailing in the earlier years of the century. The Lowell 
factories were said to employ 3,800 women and 1,200 men in 
1833; at about the same time it was estimated that two- 
fifths of all the factory workers in New England were 
children under sixteen years of age. Wages had risen nomi- 
nally, but since they had lagged behind the rise of prices, the 
workingmen could buy less with their earnings than earlier. 

Factory manufacture tended to concentrate in cities; and 
the period was marked by the rapid growth of urban popula- 



SIGNIFICANCE OF JACKSONIAN DEMOCRACY 205 

tion. In 1800 there were only six cities in the nation with a 
population of eight thousand or over ; three decades later the 
number had increased to twenty-six, including three whose 
population ranged from seventy-five thousand to a quarter 
of a million. The wage-earners, forced to live near their 
source of employment, became congested into squalid and 
unwholesome tenements, where they lived under conditions 
of destitution, disease, vice and crime. The city of Lowell, 
Massachusetts, which in 1820 did not even exist, had a popu- 
lation of over twenty thousand in 1840, collected there 
largely to work in the mills. 

The pressure of industry not only tended to degrade the 
wage-earners morally and physically but left no place for the 
education of the children. In 1825 a committee of the 
Massachusetts legislature engaged in investigating the oppor- 
tunities of children for schooling was able to discover only 
two towns where the children between the ages of six and 
seventeen worked as few as eleven hours of steady labor a 
day; elsewhere the usual working hours were twelve and 
thirteen. Even when the time could be found, the children 
of the poor were everywhere excluded from attendance at 
the better schools. Although the principle of free, tax- 
supported schools had long been established in Massachusetts 
and most of New England, public schools were generally 
much less efficient than private schools, and Rhode Island 
had no public educational system whatever. In such states 
as New York and Pennsylvania, private schools were con- 
ducted for the children of the well-to-do, and such free 
schools as were maintained were regarded as dispensers of 
charity to paupers with all the odium attached thereto. In 
1833 it was estimated that in the entire country one million 
children of the ages from six to fifteen were not in any 
school, and eighty thousand of these were in the state of 
New York. 

Other conditions of their daily life convinced the laboring 



2o6 NEW VIEWPOINTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

class that the law and the courts bore unequally upon the 
poor and the rich. The eastern states were slower than the 
western in bestowing the franchise upon the unpropertied 
class. Even when this concession was reluctantly granted, 
much injustice remained in the operation of the laws. The 
compulsory militia system permitted the rich to escape by 
paying a small fine whereas the poor man must serve or go to 
prison. The debtors' prisons still swallowed thousands of 
worthy but unfortunate men. Labor combinations to raise 
wages were prosecuted under the old English common law 
as illegal conspiracies. The banking system of the times 
afforded the workingmen none of the advantages of credit 
and frequently caused them to be paid in bank notes of 
doubtful value. 

JXhe revolt of labor against these hard conditions of life 
formed an integral part of the democratic upheaval of Jack- 
son's time. Theoretically the workers might have escaped 
most of these hardships by joining their venturesome 
brethren who had taken up public land on the frontier ; and 
in fact many individuals of self-reliance and a little cash 
surplus did so. But to the average mill-hand, burdened 
with a family, the public domain west of the Alleghanies 
seemed inaccessible from distance and expense; he felt 
obliged to work out his salvation in the community where he 
resided and with such means as lay readily at his hand. 

The first awakening of American wage-earners occurred 
in the late twenties. Before that time a sullen discontent 
had shown itself occasionally in strikes and in the sporadic 
formation of labor unions ; but the working class as a whole 
remained unorganized, and unaware that their greatest hope 
for relief lay in combined and aggressive action. About 
1825, however, this fact dawned upon their consciousness 
and they began to make use of their collective strength for 
the betterment of social conditions. vTheir efforts fell in the 



SIGNIFICANCE OF JACKSONIAN DEMOCRACY 207 

two more or less related spheres of industrial and political 
action. 

From 1825 dates a rapid multiplication of labor unions, or 
"trade associations" as they were then called. In every 
large city the different trades succeeded in organizing. At 
the outset the various trade associations in a city were un- 
connected with each other; but in 1827 a movement began in 
Philadelphia to join together the several trade associations 
into an effective central organization of the wage-earners of 
the entire city. The new organization was called the 
"Mechanics' Union of Trade Associations," and its constitu- 
tion declared that its object was "to avert, if possible, the 
desolating effects which must inevitably arise from a depre- 
ciation of the intrinsic value of human labor" and "to pro- 
mote equally the happiness, prosperity and welfare of the 
whole community." 

The idea of central federations spread to other cities; so 
that within a few years all the large cities had similar organi- 
zations. In 1834 occurred the next logical step when the 
city federations .came together in a national federation. At 
about the same time some of the stronger crafts began to 
organize upon a national basis, namely the cordwainers, the 
printers, the comb makers, the carpenters and the handloom 
weavers. By 1836 it was estimated that union membership 
in the seaboard cities of the North amounted to three hun- 
dred thousand. 

These labor organizations sought not only to improve con- 
ditions of employment through strikes and other forms of 
industrial action but they also directed their efforts to 
effecting reforms of a broader social import through politi- 
cal action. The transition to active political participation 
was natural and easy. At first the city federations pledged 
the candidates of the old parties "to support the interests 
and claims of the Working Classes" in the city council and 



2o8 NEW VIEWPOINTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

the state legislature; but when these halfway expedients 
failed to obtain results, the wage-earners proceeded to 
organize their own parties in state after state. The first 
Working Men's party appeared in Philadelphia in 1,828; 
New York followed in the next year ; and within a short 
time Working Men's parties of varying strength were to be 
found in all the seaboard states north of Maryland. These 
parties enjoye4 local successes, occasionally sent members to 
the state legislatures and to Congress, and forced the old 
parties in some instances to name candidates favorable to 
labor. 

The aims of the organized labor elements harmonized with 
the new democratic aspirations of the age and did much 
toward vitalizing those aspirations. The strikes carried on 
by the trade associations sought to increase wages, to secure 
what we now call the "closed shop," and to shorten the 
workday to ten hours. The demands of the labor parties 
were broader in scope, touching on most of the conditions 
that made life arduous for the less fortunate classes and 
seeking to create broader opportunities for the common man. 
As summed up by the Mechanics' Free Press of Philadelphia 
in its issue of April 16, 1831, the program of labor com- 
prised these leading demands: "Universal education, aboli- 
tion of chartered monopolies [including the United States 
Bank], equal taxation, revision or abolition of the militia 
system, a less expensive law system, all officers to be elected 
directly by the people, a lien law for laborers, no legislation 
on religion." The abolition of imprisonment for debt might 
properly have been included in this list. 

The paramount emphasis placed by labor organizations 
everywhere upon education grew out of the conviction, often 
expressed, that since "our government is republican, our 
education should be equally so." In the words of the Phila- 
delphia Trades Union, nothing less was demanded than that 



SIGNIFICANCE OF JACKSONIAN DEMOCRACY 209 

"an open school, and competent teachers, for every child in 
the State, from the lowest branch of an infant school to the 
lecture rooms of practical science, should be established, and 
those to superintend them to be chosen by the people." 
Fortunate it was for the republic that at a time when the 
untutored masses were receiving the boon of political 
equality the battering away of the organized workingmen 
was making possible the establishment of popular education. 
In general the working people not only fought against their 
own immediate ills but as individuals were in sympathy with 
all the reform movements of the period, from temperance 
and the outlawing of lotteries to the abolition of capital 
punishment. 

The labor movement reached its floodtide while Andrew 
Jackson was in office. Indeed, he could not have been 
elected president if the votes of the laboring men of the 
Northeast had not been added to those of his followers in 
the Southeast and the West. Jackson capitalized this sup- 
port when he waged battle against the great financial monop- 
oly, the United States Bank, and gave express recognition to 
its demands when he established the ten-hour workday in 
the federal shipyards in 1836. 

The industrial depression following the panic of 1837 
destroyed most of the labor unions and federations ; and the 
strength of the labor parties was sapped by internal dissen- 
sions and by the action of the Democratic party in taking 
over many of the workingmen*s chief demands. But this 
pioneer labor movement had already made a lasting impres- 
sion on American democratic ideals and practice. Jackson's 
successor, Martin Van Buren, applied the principle of the 
ten-hour day to all government works in 1840; and indeed by 
that date the shorter workday was established in most 
mechanical branches. By that time, also, imprisonment for 
debt had been abolished in most of the states ; and the foun- 



2IO NEW VIEWPOINTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

dations of popular education had been laid. Further than 
this, Miss Helen Sumner has well said : ''though the Work- 
ing Men's party had little success in electing its candidates to 
office and though its immediate tangible results were small, it 
succeeded in forcing its measures into the foreground of 
public attention, and eventually all the specific evils of which 
it complained were abolished and all its constructive meas- 
ures were passed." 

Ill 

The democratic ferment of the twenties and the thirties 
was also active in the intellectual and spiritual life of the 
people. Hidden forces seemed to be set free which em- 
boldened writers and thinkers to loftier flights than had been 
their wont and gave them a robust faith in the perfectibility 
of mankind. The new spirit flowered luxuriantly in the 
literature of the period, which for the first time cast off its 
servile dependence on England in literary manners. In 1819 
appeared Washington Irving's Sketch Book, which immor- 
talized the Hudson river in world literature. In 1821 James 
Fenimore Cooper published The Spy, a purely American 
novel, to be followed two years later by The Pioneers, the 
first of the Leathersto eking Tales. 

The Spy has been termed by discerning critics "our liter- 
ary Declaration of Independence," and it marked the open- 
ing of an era of a truly indigenous American literature. The 
writers of the next quarter-century became definitely "Amer- 
ican" in their outlook, originality and subject matter. It 
was in this period that John Greenleaf Whittier, Oliver 
Wendell Holmes, James Russell Lowell, Ralph Waldo 
Emerson and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow began their 
literary careers — all of them men who, without losing their 
kinship with the literature of the world, derived n^||h of 
their inspiration from their American environment lllr dis- 
played strong humanitarian sympathy with the moral unrest 



SIGNIFICANCE OF JACKSONIAN DEMOCRACY 211 

of the times. Out of this period, too, came Edgar Allan 
Poe, a tragic and solitary genius, the Ishmael of letters, who 
shows no reflection of place or time in his work but through 
whom America made her most significant contribution to 
general literature — the short story. 

The trend of the times inspired men of scholarship to 
rewrite the history of the republic with a new dignity and 
with a purpose to glorify democratic institutions and deify 
the founders of the nation. George Bancroft began his 
monumental history of the United States in the thirties, 
thoroughly imbued with the belief, as Professor Dunning 
has aptly remarked, that the American republic represented 
"the culmination of God's wonder-working in the life of 
mankind." Late in the twenties Jared Sparks took up his 
vast labors of collecting and editing historical documents, 
taking care to alter and embellish such writings as he selected 
for publication on the theory that his fellow countrymen 
should not be disillusioned by observing the patriot fathers 
in their unguarded moments. Or as one of his admirers 
put it in defense of Sparks's method, he was resolved to 
defeat the "prurient curiosity" of the public "to see a great 
man in dishabille." 

The awakened interest in literary self-expression was 
further evidenced by the establishment of the first substan- 
tial literary periodicals in America and the founding of great 
publishing houses. In 181 5 the North American Review 
made its appearance; and before Jackson left the presi- 
dency, the New England Magazine (1831), the Knicker- 
bocker Magazine (1832) and the Southern Literary Mes- 
senger (1834) were added to the list. D. Appleton started 
his career as a book publisher in 1831 ; and by the close of 
the decade the foundations had been laid of the well known 
houj^pf Harper & Brothers, J. B. Lippincott & Company, 
LittllBrown & Company, and G. P. Putnam & Sons. 

The ifceration of the American mind from time-honored 



212 NEW VIEWPOINTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

traditions and rigid conventions appeared markedly in the 
ecclesiastical revolts and religious revivals of the age. In 
Lowell's epigram, "Protestantism had made its fortune and 
no longer protested"; a new religious spirit better suited to 
the times was needed. The stern Calvinistic theology, which 
had so long held sway in New England, felt the first impact 
of the democratic tide. Under the leadership of Channing, 
Unitarianism was organized in 1815 by dissenting members 
of the Congregational Church, on a creed opposing the 
sombre doctrines of total depravity and predestination and 
affirming the infinite possibilities of human development. 
The new system exerted an influence altogether out of pro- 
portion to the number of its adherents, and attained its 
loftiest expression in the philosophic movement known as 
"Transcendentalism," of which Ralph Waldo Emerson was 
the foremost exponent. Transcendentalism was a combina- 
tion of the spiritual earnestness of Puritanism and an un- 
trammeled individualism, which strove to emphasize the 
dignity and freedom of the human spirit. 

The spread of Unitarianism throughout New England 
was checked only by the work of men like Horace Bushnell, 
who sought to harmonize the Calvinistic theology of the old 
Congregational system with the new precepts of democracy. 
Other sects were experiencing similar difficulties in the 
attempt to keep pace with the changing ideals of the age. 
The Quakers were rent in twain by the teachings of Elias 
Hicks. The Campbells, father and son, led a departure from 
the established Presbyterian order. Universalism took its 
rise at this time; and in the West there occurred a rapid 
growth of the Methodists, Baptists and other denominations 
which were able to satisfy the religious cravings of a people 
impatient of theological hair-splitting. The religious zeal of 
the frontiersmen found characteristic expression in the 
democratic camp-meeting, where the revivalist might use his 



SIGNIFICANCE OF JACKSONIAN DEMOCRACY 213 

knowledge of crowd psychology to arouse his audience to 
ecstasies of religious excitement. 

The new interest in the well-being of the masses found 
expression in countless projects for social betterment. In 
1824 began the first organized movement against strong 
drink. The use of intoxicants in the United States was well- 
nigh universal. Even at the chief colleges liquor was openly 
sold from booths on public days ; and municipal officials pro- 
vided free punch for those who marched on a training-day. 
On the dinner tables of the inns were to be found decanters 
of brandy free to the guests. The movement began in 
Boston with the formation of societies pledged to abstinence. 
Within five years more than one thousand of these societies 
had been formed in all parts of the country. By that time 
more than fifty distilleries had gone out of business, and the 
importation of foreign spirits was greatly reduced. The 
movement now took the form of the "Washington societies," 
and in the forties blossomed forth into a demand for state 
statutes forbidding the liquor traffic altogether, 
--^^ther reform movements found inspiration in the temper 
of the times. In the twenties the woman rights movement 
had its inception. At first directed to the improvement of 
female education and enlarged rights for married women, it 
speedily broadened its scope and, in the forties, extended to 
a demand for woman suffrage. The anti-slavery movement 
underwent a significant change. Surcharged with the new 
democratic spirit, it lost its former philanthropic and hor- 
tatory character ; and in the hands of William Lloyd Garrison 
it became a militant crusade for equal racial rights regardless 
of existing legal and constitutional barriers. The American 
Anti-Slavery Society was founded; and by 1840, two thou- 
sand centers of abolition propaganda existed in all parts of 
the North. 

But the new humanitarian spirit also had immediate prac- 



214 NEW VIEWPOINTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

tical effects. Massachusetts now founded the first public 
hospital for the insane. Stephen Girard of Philadelphia, 
who died in 1831, left the bulk of his fortune for the estab- 
lishment of the orphan school that still bears his name. 
Special schools for the deaf and the blind were instituted in 
many states; and state provision for the separation of juve- 
nile delinquents from adult criminals was begun. The grow- 
ing demand for higher education was met and strengthened 
by the establishment of Colby, Amherst, Oberlin, Kenyon, 
Mt. Holyoke, Randolph-Macon, Haverford, Knox, Muskin- 
gum and Marietta colleges, of Denison, Tulane, Wesleyan, 
Western Reserve and New York universities, and of Hart- 
ford, Lane and Union theological seminaries. 

Characteristic of the illimitable faith in humanity were 
the optimistic attempts to establish communistic colonies in 
various parts of the country between 1820 and 1840. Robert 
Owen, who had already attempted to found a model indus- 
trial town in Scotland, came to America and established a 
community at New Harmony, Indiana, where labor and 
property were to be in common. A little later the New 
England Transcendentalists founded a cooperative society 
at Brook Farm, near Boston, an enterprise which Haw- 
thorne, one of the participants, subsequently satirized in The 
BUthedale Romance. More than thirty other communities 
and ''phalansteries" were established, some of which are still 
in existence. Emerson remarked: **Not a man you meet 
but has a draft of a new community in his pocket!" Al- 
though most of these experiments turned out to be failures, 
the fine idealism underlying them proved to be a fount of 
inspiration for later generations of social reformers in 
American history. 

As the foregoing accownt suggests, the restlessness of the 
times had its fantastic offshoots as well as its elements of 
permanent value. James Russell Lowell in his essay on 
Thoreau (1865) gives us his humorous recollections of these 



SIGNIFICANCE OF JACKSONIAN DEMOCRACY 215 

years: "Every possible form of intellectual and physical 
dyspepsia brought forth its gospel. Bran had its prophets. 
. . . Plainness of speech was carried to a pitch that would 
have taken away the breath of George Fox. . . . Every- 
body had a mission (with a capital M) to attend to every- 
body-else's business. No brain but had its private maggot, 
which must have found pitiably short commons sometimes. 
Not a few impecunious zealots abjured the use of money 
(unless earned by other people), professing to live on the 
internal revenues of the spirit. Some had an assurance of 
instant millennium so soon as hooks and eyes should be 
substituted for buttons. Communities were established 
where everything was to be common but common-sense. 
. . . Many foreign revolutionists out of work added to 
the general misunderstanding their contribution of broken 
English in every most ingenious form of fracture. All 
stood ready at a moment's notice to reform everything but 
themselves." 

But Lowell was not willing to dismiss this ebullience with 
a jest. 'There was a very solid and serious kernel, full of 
the most deadly explosiveness," he added; and then he put 
his finger upon the fundamental significance of the unrest: 
"It was simply a struggle for fresh air, in which, if the 
windows could not be opened, there was danger that panes 
would be broken, though painted with images of saints and 
martyrs. . . . There is only one thing better than tradi- 
tion, and that is the original and eternal life out of which all 
tradition takes its rise. It was this life which the reformers 
demanded, with more or less clearness of consciousness and 
expression, life in politics, life in literature, life in religion." 
It required the broad sympathy and keen insight of a Lowell 
to recognize that Andrew Jackson, James Fenimore Cooper, 
Ralph Waldo Emerson and William Lloyd Garrison, how- 
ever differing in external qualities and interests, were essen- 
tially products of the same era. 



2i6 NEW VIEWPOINTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

IV 

The irrepressible desire of the common man for political 
self-expression, to which Lowell alluded, led to many radical 
changes in political precept and practice. A natural con- 
comitant was the liberalization of the suffrage. The new 
western commonwealths came into the union as self-con- 
fessed democracies. With the exception of one or two 
states, all adult white males were given the right to vote ; and 
everywhere, too, the principle was accepted that representa- 
tion should be based upon population and not upon property. 
The action of the western states proved to be a vast make- 
weight in favor of greater democracy in the older states, 
reinforced, as the demand was, by the agitation of the labor- 
ing elements of the seaboard towns. New York, Massachu- 
setts, Virginia and other states proceeded to modify their 
suffrage provisions so as to admit great numbers of the 
unenfranchised classes. 

The presidential campaign of 1832 revealed to what extent 
the new political forces had gained mastery of the situation. 
The old method of nominating presidential candidates by 
means of a congressional clique, a practice that had already 
broken down eight years before, was now replaced by 
national party conventions, in which the rank and file of the 
party had representation. All parties in the campaign em- 
ployed the new device. At the same time was begun the 
practice, essentially democratic in its purpose, of informing 
the public by means of a party platform of the policies which 
the party intended to adopt if successful in the election. 
Even the organization of the Anti-Masonic party in this 
campaign may be regarded as a product of the fierce demo- 
cratic spirit of the times ; it represented a determination, 
however misguided, to rid America of what was thought to 
be a secret and dangerous influence in American life. 



SIGNIFICANCE OF JACKSONIAN DEMOCRACY217 

Changes of like character were being introduced into 
state government and poHtics. Property qualifications for 
ofificeholding were removed. The governor was made elec- 
tive by the people instead of by the legislature as heretofore 
in many states. The principle of popular election was even 
applied to the judges of the state courts. In Connecticut 
and Massachusetts the church establishments were over- 
thrown. 

The choice of Andrew Jackson or of a man like him was 
almost inevitable under the circumstances. The popular 
demand was for a president who should symbolize the 
apotheosis of the common man. No mistake was made in 
this respect in the case of Jackson. He had been born in the 
backwoods country of North Carolina, where he had passed 
his boyhood in bare poverty. Picking up some necessary 
scraps of knowledge he removed to the newer frontier of 
Tennessee to practise law. His public career began almost 
at once, for he was a natural leader and maintained his 
mastery of men by pistol or blow, by vehement assertion or 
rude intellectual force, as the amenities of the occasion 
demanded. As president of the United States, he displayed 
most of the virtues and many of the defects of the masses 
from which he sprang. The scrambling, punch-drinking 
mob which invaded Washington at 'the inauguration, crowd- 
ing and pushing into the White House and tjpping over tubs 
of punch, did so in the spirit of copartners who at last had 
gotten an opportunity to take account of the assets of the 
firm. Though this scene was not countenanced by Jackson, 
he placed his seal of approval upon the aspirations of the 
rank and file when he introduced the "spoils system" of 
appointments. What could seem more equitable to the 
primitive democracy of his day than the principle of ''rota- 
tion in office," and what more undemocratic than the older 
conception of a permanent officeholding gentry? 



2i8 NEW VIEWPOINTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

His democratic instincts again received full play in his 
great battle against the United States Bank, an institution 
controlled by wealthy investors in England and the United 
States and one which he envisaged as a money monopoly 
dangerous to free institutions. Once again he interpreted 
the inarticulate will of the people when he issued his flaming 
manifesto against South Carolina nullification. Had Con- 
gress heeded the advice given in each one of his eight annual 
messages, the Constitution would have been amended to pro- 
vide for the election of president and vice-president by direct 
popular vote. His great contribution to American history 
was the establishment of the principle that the government 
should be responsive to the will of the masses. 

Yet Andrew Jackson without his background of social 
revolt and humanitarian idealism could not be understood or 
explained. He was possible because the times had prepared 
the way for his coming and had ripened the popular mind for 
his message. Like Rostand's Chantccler, his crowing did 
not summon the sun of a new dawn, but his voice rang out in 
clarion tones when the morning light was breaking. 

BIBLIOGRAPBICAL NOTE 

The facts which are brought together in the foregoing treatment 
may be found scattered through many secondary works ; but the 
vital relationship of these facts to each other and to the democratic 
upheava:! of the twenties and the thirties was first made clear by 
Willis Mason West in his American History and Government (Bos- 
ton, 1913), chap. xiii. 

The western elements in the democratic movement have been best 
set forth by Frederick Jackson Turner in his essay, "Contributions 
of the West to American Democracy" (1903) in his The Frontier 
in American HiMory (New York, 1920), chap, ix ; and in his volume 
Rise of the New West, 1819-1829 (in The American Nation: a 
History, vol. 14; New York, 1906), chaps, v-viii. 

The facts concerning the pioneer labor movement in America were 
first set forth in documentary form in the monumental work edite(A 
by John R. Commons and four associates entitled Documentary His* 
tory of American Industrial Society (10 v.; Cleveland, 1910-1911), 
of which vols. V and vi are devoted to "Labor Movements from 



SIGNIFICANCE OF JACKSONIAN DEMOCRACY 219 

1820 t9 1840." This material was put into the form of an historical 
narrative by John R. Commons and six other scholars in the work 
entitled History of Labour in- the United States (2 v.; New York, 
1918). Vol. i, parts ii and iii, deal with the period from 1820 to 
1840. 

The literary awakening has been treated with relation to its his- 
torical background by William B. Cairns in his monograph On the 
Development of American Literature from 18 15 to 1833 mith 
Especial Reference to Periodicals (Madison, 1898), and more ade- 
quately by William J. Long in his American Literature (Boston, 
1013), chaps, iii-iv. The new tendencies in historical scholarship 
are the theme of John Spencer Bassett's volume The Middle Group 
of American Historians (New York, 1917). 

The new religious trend may be studied in the histories of the 
various denominations. The facts concerning the Garrisonian 
abolition movement may be found in many places but nowhere more 
clearly than in Albert Bushnell Hart's Slavery and Abolition, 1831- 
1841 (in The American Nation: a History, vol. 16; New York, 
1906), chaps, xi-xviii, xxi. For the woman's movement in this 
period, see the Bibliographical Note at the close of chap, vi of the 
present volume. The educational awakening has been most appreci- 
atively set forth with reference to the social and political background 
of the times by Ellwood P. Cubberley in his Public Education in 
the United States (Boston, 1919), chaps, iv-ix. 

A synthetic treatment of the communistic experiments may be 
found in John Humphrey Noyes's History of American Socialisms 
(Philadelphia, 1870), and more briefly in Morris Hillquit's History 
of Socialism in the United States (New York, 1903), part i. The 
widespread interest in social reform is treated from the standpoint 
of transcendentalist philosophy by Ralph Waldo Emerson in his 
lecture entitled "New England Reformers," delivered in 1844 and 
reprinted in his Complete Works (12 v.; New York, n. d.), vol. iii, 
pp. 237-270. The political aspects of the democratic movement have 
been treated in an enlightening manner in M. Ostrogorski's 
Democracy and the Organization of Political Parties (2 v. ; New 
York, 1902), vol. ii, chap, ii; Charles Edward Merriam's A History 
of American Political Theories (New York, 1903), chap, v; and 
William MacDonald's Jacksonian Democracy, 1829-183/' (in The 
American Nation: a History, vol. I5;/New York, 1906), chaps, iv, 
xiv, XV. 

Of the many biographies of Andrew Jackson the most recent and 
best is that by John Spencer Bassett (2 v.; Garden City, 1911). 



CHAPTER X ^ 



THE STATE RIGHTS FETISH 



The doctrine of state rights is one that is intimately asso- 
ciated with American history, especially with certain move- 
ments and controversies that fell in the period before the 
Civil War. Writers and teachers of American history are 
accustomed to use the phrase as if it furnished a fundamental 
explanation of the motivation of events. That this is far 
from true any detailed examination of American history 
should make apparent ; and indeed the expression itself has 
borne different meanings at different epochs or as understood 
by different leaders in the same epoch. At one period of 
our history the foremost exponents of the state rights theory 
were believers in nullification. At another time the doctrine 
was epitomized in the claim of the right of secession. In 
'either of these forms the doctrine might more properly be 
called "state sovereignty." Yet again, those who promul- 
gated state rights views had nothing more in contemplation 
than a peaceful political purpose to induce the federal gov- 
ernment to allow freer play for the authority of the state 
governments. 

These contrasting schools of state rights opinion did not 
essentially differ with each other as to fundamental purpose 
but, as we shall see, they held diff'erent views as to a practical 
program of achieving results. The kernel of all forms of 
the state rights doctrine was the desire of the state govern- 
ments to enhance their power or, at least, to resist encroach- 

220 



THE STATE RIGHTS FETISH 221 

ments of the federal authority. Since the respective spheres 
of power of state and nation are defined in the federal 
Constitution, advocates of state rights, however they may 
have differeSI' among themselves, all joined in professing a 
belief in a "strict construction" of that instrument. They 
held that the powers granted to the federal government in 
the Constitution should be understood in the most literal 
sense and, in the language of the tenth amendment, that 
the powers "not delegated to the United States by the Con- 
stitution, nor prohibited by it to the States," were "reserved 
to the States respectively, or to the people." ^ 

The origin of the great controversy is to be found in the 
l^ederal Constitutional Conventiouv In a less direct sense, 
the state rights question is not to be regarded as an American 
problem at all, but rather as the inevitable fruit of any at- 
tempt to reconcile centralized federative control with local 
self-government. In this sense, the Revolutionary War 
may be regarded as a victory for state rights, or colonial 
self-government, carried to the point of secession; and the 
Articles of Confederation were a codification of that victory 
in the guise of a formal constitution under which the separate 
states became freer of their own central government than 
they as colonies had desired to be of the British home 
government. The chief task that confronted the leaders of 
the Federal Constitutional Convention was, in its essence, 
the same that the British government had failed to solve 
a dozen years before: the problem of harmonizing central 
unified control with state sovereignty. 

The solution was worked out in the Constitutional Con- 
vention by men of practical vision who were resolved to 

^ It is interesting to note that the state-rights strict constructionists were 
always one-sided in the application of their doctrine, and were never willing 
to apply strict construction as a criterion when defining the rights reserved to 
the states. From this point of view those who are known in history as the 
broad constructionists, the men who desired to preserve or enlarge the powers 
of the federal government, may be regarded as strict constructionists in respect 
to state authofity. 



222 NEW VIEWPOINTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

make the national government a going concern at whatever 
cost to preconceived theories of state sovereignty. The 
constitution they produced magnificently justified their 
method; but from the standpoint of pure theory the docu- 
ment necessarily contained compromises, concealments and 
inconsistencies which were eagerly seized upon by later 
disputants to justify their peculiar views of the nature of 
the federal system that had been created. Leaders of both 
the nationalist and state rights schools could find aid and 
comfort in the wording of the Constitution; but neither 
group could make out an impregnable case for its manner 
of thinking without ignoring or explaining away phrases 
and implications which supported the contrary position. 

Readers of the older American histories are likely to get 
the impression that the state rights theory, like cotton 'and 
slavery, was a peculiar product of the South, and that in the 
political field it has dominated the beliefs and policies of the 
Democratic party. On the basis of these assumptions the 
history of the United States prior to the Civil War, and to 
some extent since, is pictured as a great struggle between 
two schools of governmental theory, the Democrats, and the 
South generally, being wedded by temperament and intellect 
to the one view, and the rival party supported by a majority 
of the northerners having a psychological affinity for the 
other. There is, of course, a measure of truth in all this; 
but the picture as a whole is in wrong perspective and blurs 
the essential facts. 

It is the purpose of the present discussion to show, as 
Alexander Johnston has so w^ell said, that ''almost every 
state in the Union in turn declared its own 'sovereignty,' 
and denounced as almost treasonable similar declarations in 
other cases by other states," and, secondly, that political 
parties have been almost as variable in this respect as the 
states. Throughout the discussion it will appear that eco- 



THE STATE RIGHTS FETISH 223 

nomic interest or some other local advantage has usually 
determined the attitude of states and parties toward questions 
of constitutional construction. 

II 

The first notable attempt by any state legislatures to 
formulate the state rights doctrine appeared in the well- 
known Virginia and Kentucky resolutions of 1798 and 1799. 
We know now that these resolutions had a political animus 
behind them. Drafted respectively by Madison and Jeffer- 
son, they were adopted by the legislatures of Virginia and 
Kentucky as a spectacular protest against the action of the 
Federalists in Congress in passing the Alien and Sedition 
Acts and other laws which seemed to contravene a plain 
reading of the Constitution. Far from being carefully 
reasoned documents, these resolutions resorted to extrava- 
gant language in much the same manner as modern political 
platforms and for exactly the same purpose: the arousing 
of popular indignation against the party in power. 

By both states the Union was pronounced a compact 
formed by sovereign states which retained the right to decide 
when the federal government was acting beyond its consti- 
tutional powers. The Virginia resolutions asserted, some- 
what vaguely, that when, as in the present case, the federal 
government was guilty of exceeding its authority, the states 
had the right "to interpose for arresting the progress of the 
evil" ; and the Kentucky legislature, while bravely resolving 
that nullification was "the rightful remedy," ended up rather 
lamely by declaring that agains;t the acts objected to "this 
Commonwealth does now enter ... its solemn protest." 
In view of the next turning in the history of the state rights 
theory, it is interesting to note that the New England legis- 
latures, controlled by Federalist opinion, were a unit in 
decrying the dangerous tendency of the Virginia and Ken- 



224 NEW VIEWPOINTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

tucky resolutions and in asserting that the power of passing 
upon the constitutionality of acts of Congress was vested 
by the Constitution exclusively in the federal courts. 

The second important development of the state rights 
doctrine grew out of very different circumstances. In 
December, 1807, the Republican party in Congress under the 
leadership of President Jefferson passed the embargo as an 
act of retaliation against British and French interferences 
with American trade during the Napoleonic wars. New 
England was the center of the shipbuilding industry and the 
chief carrier of world commerce at this time, and the people 
there bitterly resented a regulation which meant the total 
destruction of their chief source of wealth. They therefore 
embarked upon a career of obstruction and opposition to 
the federal government, that was to last far into the war 
that the United States waged with Great Britain from 1812 
to 1815. 

Forced to resort to minority tactics, the New England 
leaders found their most effective weapon in the adoption of 
the state rights doctrine which Jefferson and Madison had 
sponsored a few years earlier. In February, 1809, the 
Massachusetts legislature resolved that the embargo measures 
were, *'in many respects, unjust, oppressive and unconsti- 
tutional, and not legally binding on the citizens of this state," 
though the citizens were counselled "to abstain from forcible 
resistance, and to apply for their remedy in a peaceable 
manner to the laws of the commonwealth." The Connecticut 
legislature resolved in a similar spirit that it would not "assist 
or concur in giving effect to the . . . unconstitutional act, 
passed to enforce the Embargo." 

With the outbreak of the war with Great Britain, the 
New England leaders found new grounds for disaffection. 
One cause for complaint was the insistence of the United 
States government that the state militia should be called into 



THE STATE RIGHTS FETISH 225 

service under federal officers.' The Connecticut legislature 
solemnly resolved that "the state of Connecticut is a FREE 
SOVEREIGN and INDEPENDENT state; that the 
United States are a confederacy of states; that we are a 
confederated and not a consolidated republic," and that the 
demand of the War Department was in plain violation of 
the Constitution. When a conscription bill was proposed in 
Congress, the Connecticut legislature denounced it in Octo- 
ber, 1814, as subversive of the "freedom, sovereignty and 
independence" of the state and "inconsistent with the prin- 
ciples of the constitution of the United States." The "free, 
sovereign and independent State of Massachusetts" gave vent 
to its disapproval in a succession of resolutions centering 
about the thought : "Whenever the national compact is vio- 
lated, . . . this legislature is bound to interpose its power, 
and wrest from the oppressor his victim"; and it recalled 
that "This is the spirit of our Union" as "explained by the 
very man [President Madison], who now sets at defiance 
all the principles of his early political life." 

The festering discontent reached its climax in the Hartford 
Convention of December, 1814, made up of official delegates 
from Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island, and of 
representatives from local conventions in New Hampshire 
and Vermont. We do not know to this day what occurred 
behind the closed doors of the convention hall although there 
is no doubt that talk of secession ran rife. Soberer counsels 
won the day, however. Resolutions were adopted repeating 
the gist of the Virginia resolutions of 1798 and demanding 
seven amendments to the federal Constitution which, if 
adopted, would remove all of the New England grievances. 
"If the Union be destined to dissolution," the convention 
announced to the world, "... it should, if possible, be the 
work of peaceable times, and deliberate consent." 

The geographical center of the state rights agitation shifted 



226 NEW VIEWPOINTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

once more with the renewal of the controversy over the 
United States Bank. When a bill for re-charter of the First 
Bank was pending in Congress, the Pennsylvania legislature 
in January, 1811, announced its conviction that the proposed 
measure was unwarranted by the Constitution, and asserted 
that the Constitution, *'being to all intents and purposes a 
treaty between sovereign states, the general government by 
this treaty was not constituted the exclusive or final judge 
of the powers it was to exercise." The legislature of Vir- 
ginia agreed that the passage of the bill "would be not only 
unconstitutional, but a dangerous encroachment on the 
sovereignty of the states." 

When the Second United States Bank was finally estab- 
lished in 1 81 6, hostility to the bank reappeared, being aggra- 
vated by the hard times attending the crisis of 1819 and by 
the opposition of the state banks. In several states the 
legislatures levied heavy taxes on the branches of the United 
States Bank within their boundaries ; but the Supreme Court 
in the McCulloch v. Maryland decision in 1 819 sustained 
the constitutionality of the bank and its exemption from state 
taxation. Nothing dismayed by this turn of events, the 
General Assembly of Ohio reaffirmed its right to tax the 
branch banks, endorsed the Virginia and Kentucky resolu- 
tions of 1798 and 1800, and denounced the dogma that the 
powers of "sovereign States" may be determined and settled 
by the United States Supreme Court. 

The federal government found an outspoken friend in 
South Carolina and a somewhat unexpected defender in 
Massachusetts. In resolutions of 1821 and 1822 both states 
asserted the full right of Congress to enact laws establishing 
a national bank with branches in the several states, and 
Massachusetts, with an odor of self-righteousness, explicitly 
championed the right of the United States Supreme Court to 
settle all questions involving the constitutionality of legisla- 



THE STATE RIGHTS FETISH 227 

tion. Even Pennsylvania, which had pronounced the bank 
unconstitutional twenty years before, rallied to its support 
in 1 83 1, and requested Congress to renew its charter! 

Georgia was the next state to lift the standard of state 
rights. Her interest in the matter was the outgrowth of a 
long controversy with certain Indian tribes within her 
boundaries, in which the United States government was 
acting the part of protector of the Indians. In December, 
1827, the legislature officially recorded its approval of a 
statement made by Governor Troup to the Secretary of War, 
that he felt it "to be his duty to resist to the utmost any 
military attack which the Government of the United States 
shall think proper to make on the territory, the People or 
the sovereignty of Georgia." When the United States 
Supreme Court handed down a decision favorable to the 
Indians, the legislature passed resolutions enjoining the 
officers of the state to ignore "every mandate and process" 
issued by the court, and requiring the governor to defend 
the rights of the state "with all the force and means placed 
at his command by the Constitution and laws of this state." 

The action of Georgia aroused the attention of other states 
whose Indian problems had long since been settled. The 
legislatures of Massachusetts and Pennsylvania passed reso- 
lutions in support of the supremacy and integrity of the 
federal judiciary; and Connecticut, erstwhile defender of 
the compact theory, resolved in 1831 that "we regard the 
judicial department ... as sacred in its origin, and invalu- 
able in its purposes and objects." It must have been out 
of the fullness of her experience that she asserted that the 
legislatures "of the several states partake too readily of local 
jealousies and excitements to be entrusted with the final 
determination of questions involving the validity of the 
federal laws." 

While the Georgia Indian controversy was being aired, 



228 NEW VIEWPOINTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

a new movement for state rights was gathering strength in 
a different quarter of the Union. The sentiment of South 
Carolina statesmen had hitherto been distinctly nationalistic ; 
and when the legislature was urged in 1820 to denounce the 
protective system as unconstitutional, resolutions were 
adopted by the House of Representatives reprobating "the 
practice, unfortunately become too common, of arraying 
upon questions of national policy, the states as distinct and 
independent sovereignties . . . with a view to exercise a 
control over the general government." 

It was the tariff question, however, that was soon to cause 
the planters of South Carolina the same bitterness of spirit 
that the merchants of New England had felt toward the 
embargo. A high tariff to foster manufacturing could be 
of no possible assistance to the South, and indeed damaged 
that section by greatly raising the prices of the manufactures 
they must buy. So by December, 1825, the South Carolina 
legislature made the expedient discovery that a protective 
tariff was "an unconstitutional exercise of power." In a 
like category, it placed federal aid to internal improvements, 
a measure which was chiefly beneficial to northern merchants 
seeking to broaden their domestic markets. In the next few 
years South Carolina was joined in her new convictions by 
the nearby states of Virginia, Georgia, Alabama and 
Mississippi. 

But South Carolina soon began to press forward to 
positions and views in advance of those of her sister states 
of the South. Having arrived at the opinion in 1827 that 
the Constitution was a compact of the states "as separate, 
independent sovereignties," the South Carolina legislature in 
the next year adopted the famous "Exposition," written by 
John C. Calhoun, which explicitly announced the right of 
a state to nullify federal laws that were regarded by the state 
as unconstitutional. A few years later, in November, 1832, 



THE STATE RIGHTS FETISH 229 

South Carolina put her threat into execution through the 
passage of an ''Ordinance of NulHfication" by a state con- 
vention expressly assembled for that purpose. In her oppo- 
sition to the protective tariff South Carolina had carried her 
state rights views to lengths that had never been more than 
hinted at by any of her predecessors. When Congress 
granted her a measure of relief through the passage of the 
compromise tariff of 1833, the South Carolina convention 
solemnly repealed the Ordinance of Nullification and adopted 
a new ordinance nullifying the so-called Force Bill of 
Congress. 

The leaders of South Carolina in this crisis had at their 
tongues' end the earlier history of the state rights doctrine in 
America, but they sought in vain for friends and defenders 
where they had every right to expect them. In the first 
stages of the controversy, Ohio and Pennsylvania, both 
former expounders of the state rights position, expressed 
their belief that the tariff was entirely constitutional. Even 
those states of the South which had earlier declared a belief 
in the unconstitutionality of the tariff system were not 
willing to follow the logic of South Carolina into nullification. 
The Virginia legislature officially resolved that the Virginia 
resolutions of 1798 did not sustain the nullification pro- 
ceedings in South Carolina. The Georgia legislature, which 
only recently had defied the Supreme Court and the federal 
government in her dispute over the Indian lands, could now 
declare with good conscience : "we abhor the doctrine of 
Nullification as neither a peaceful, nor a constitutional 
remedy, but, on the contrary, as tending to civil commotion 
and disunion." The resolutions of Alabama and North 
Carolina were no less emphatic, Mississippi adding, with 
myopic vision into the future, "we stand firmly resolved, 
... in all events and at every hazard, to sustain" the 
president in "preserving the integrity of the Union — that 



230 XEW VIEWTOIXTS IX AMERICAX HISTORY 

Unioru whose \"alue we will never stop to calculate — holding 
it, as our fathers held it precious above aU price." Perhaps 
the most tmkiiidest cut of aU was administered by the Ken- 
tuck}- legislature, which in 1799 had first announced the right 
of nullification. The Kentuck\- resolutions proclaimed the 
imqualified right of the majorit\- to govern through laws of 
Congress, and denied that either South Carolina or any other 
state had the constitutional right to defeat the \Yi\l of the 
majority. 

From the close of the nullification episode of 1S32-1833 
to the outbreak of the Ci\il War, the agitation of state rights 
was intimately connected with a new issue of growing 
importance, the slaven* question, and the principal form as- 
stmied by the doctrine was that of the right of secession. The 
pro-slaver}- forces sought refuge in the state rights position 
as a shield against federal interference vrith pro-slaver>^ 
projects; and, as we shall see, many southern states which 
had hitherto been hostile or apathetic to the doctrine as a 
philosophical abstraction became its foremost advocates. As 
a natural consequence, anti-slavery legislatures in the Xorth 
were led to lay great stress on the national character of the 
Union and the broad powers of the general government in 
dealing with slaver}-. Xevertheless, it is significant to note 
that when it served anti-slavery purposes better to lapse into 
state rights dialectic, northern legislatures did not hesitate 
to be inconsistent. 

Thus the legislature of Massachusetts resolved in 1&44 that 
"the project of the annexation of Texas," if carried through 
to success by the pro-slaver}' forces, "may tend to drive these 
states into a dissolution of the union'' ; and when, notwith- 
standing, annexation was accomplished in the following 
year, the legislature resolved that "Massachusetts hereby 
refuses to acknowledge the act . . . authorizing the admis- 
sion of Texas, as a legal act, in any way binding her from 



THE STATE RIGHTS FETISH 231 

using her utmost exertions in cooperation with other States, 
by every lawful and constitutional measure, to annul its 
conditions, and defeat its accomplishment." Vermont, Ohio 
and Connecticut likewise protested that the federal govern- 
ment had exceeded its constitutional powers in annexing 
Texas as a state. With the outbreak of the Mexican War, 
the ^lassachusetts legislature denounced it as a pro-slavery 
war of conquest, and in 1847 resolved that the struggle was 
"unjust and unconstitutional in its origin and character" 
and that all good citizens should unite to stop it. 

The New Jersey legislature found occasion as late as 1852 
to declare, in solemn resolutions, that the Constitution was 
"a compact between the several States" and that the general 
government had been granted by the sovereign states only 
limited powers. The passage of the Fugitive Slave Act of 
1850 called forth fresh evidences of latent state rights feeling 
in the Xortii. Many of the legislatures of that section 
passed so-called Personal Liberty Laws, designed to obstruct 
the recovery of fugitive slaves under the federal act. "They 
were dangerously near the nullification of a United States 
law," James Ford Rliodes tells us. In 1855 and 1856, reso- 
lutions were passed by the legislatures of Massachusetts and 
Ohio pronouncing the Fugitive Slave Act unwarranted by 
the Constitution. In Wisconsin the state Supreme Court 
held the law to be "unconstitutional and void"; and when 
the federal Supreme Court reversed the decision, the state 
legislature resolved in 1859, on the verge of the war to 
preser\'e the Union, that the several states which had formed 
the federal compact, being "sovereign and independent," had 
**the unquestionable right to judge of its infractions" and 
to resort to "positive defiance" of all unauthorized acts of 
the general government. 

The authority of the federal judiciary was also assailed 
from many quarters when the Supreme Court handed do's^^l 



232 NEW VIEWPOINTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

the Dred Scott decision opening the federal territories to 
slavery. Ohio and other northern states lost no time in 
declaring the decision to be ''repugnant to the plain provi- 
sions of the Constitution" ; and the Maine legislature joined 
Ohio in calling for a reorganization of the court. 

Notwithstanding these occasional instances of reversion 
to type on the part of northern states, the state rights theory 
received its most important development in this period at the 
hands of the southern legislatures. In the struggle over the 
tariff, South Carolina had developed the theory and technique 
of nullification to a high point of perfection, only to find, 
on trying out the method, that it was certain to be ineffective 
in practice unless accompanied with the tacit concurrence of 
the federal government. The incident had shown conclu- 
sively that, in a test of force, a resolute federal government 
would always be able to enforce United States law in a 
nullifying state. The implications of the compact theory 
readily suggested a logical substitute for nullification in 
secession; and this measure henceforth became the great 
shibboleth of the southern state rights school. 

Already in 1831 the South Carolina legislature had an- 
nounced that 'This is a confederacy of sovereign States, 
and each may withdraw from the confederacy when it 
chooses"; and in the Ordinance of Nullification, the South 
Carolina convention of 1832 had warned the United States 
government that, if any act of coercion were directed against 
that state, the people would "hold themselves absolved from 
all further . . . political connexion" with the Union. In 
reply to these assertions, Maryland, Delaware and Kentucky, 
all of them slave states, declared expressly against the consti- 
tutional right of secession. But as the fundamental char- 
acter of the conflict between slavery and freedom became 
apparent in the subsequent years, one southern state after 
another began, rather reluctantly, to array itself at the side 
of South Carolina in her advanced constitutional position. 



THE STATE RIGHTS FETISH 233 

By 1850 the controversy over slavery reached an acute 
stage; and the actual secession of several southern states 
was prevented only by the enactment of Clay's famous com- 
promise measures. These measures, in the nature of the 
case, wQve only partially satisfactory to the South; and 
special conventions were called in a number of southern 
states to consider the advisability of secession. The conven- 
tions of Georgia and South Carolina agreed that, although 
the occasion was provocative, they would await further 
aggressions of the federal government before seceding; but 
Mississippi and Tennessee, with no premonition of the events 
of 1 861, roundly denounced secession as unsanctioned by 
the Constitution. 

The irritations produced by another decade of sectional 
strife gave to the South the united front that had hitherto 
been lacking ; and with the election of Lincoln and the firing 
on Fort Sumter, eleven southern states enacted ordinances of 
secession through special state conventions, and one other 
state, Kentucky, standing athwart the military highway 
between the sections, announced its sovereign decision 
in favor of neutrality. In an eloquent indictment of north- 
ern policy, the Mississippi convention presented the 
case of the South in its most favorable light: *'We must 
either submit to degradation and to the loss of property 
[in slaves] worth four billions of money, or we must secede 
from the Union framed by our fathers, to secure this as 
well as every other species of property. For far less cause 
than this our fathers separated from the Crown of England." 

The victory of the federal government in the Civil War 
forever settled the theory of state rights so far as nullifica- 
tion and secession were concerned. Express disavowal of 
doctrines so utterly discredited on the battlefield was hardly 
required; but the southern state conventions of 1865, ^^1^ 
to reorganize the state governments under President John- 
son's supervision, solemnly proclaimed the invalidity of their 



234 NEW VIEWPOINTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

ordinances of secession. The conventions of South Carolina 
and Georgia, with a fine, if futile, consistency, preferred 
to repeal rather than to repudiate their ordinances. 

Since the Civil War the federal government has pro- 
gressed with unprecedented rapidity toward a consolidation 
of authority. Steam and electricity, and the dwindling im- 
portance of state boundaries in matters of commerce, have 
made many matters fit subjects for national control which 
seemed better off in the hands of the states one hundred 
years ago. Edward A. Freeman, the English historian, 
observed while traveling in the United States in 1883 that 
"where the word 'federal' used to be used up to the time 
of the civil war or later, the word 'national' is now used all 
but invariably. It used to be 'federal capital,' 'federal army,' 
'federal revenue,' and so forth. Now the word 'national' is 
almost always used instead." 

Protests against this centralizing tendency have been 
expressed again and again; but in these latter years the 
remonstrances have not usually been uttered by the states 
in their organic capacities, nor have the protests been de- 
signed to accomplish anything more than a revulsion of 
public sentiment from the current drift of events. In this 
sense, stripped of its disunionist tendencies, the state rights 
doctrine will doubtless always be with us. Senator Joseph 
E. Ramsdell, speaking before the constitutional convention 
of Louisiana in 1921, represented the views of many present- 
day believers in state rights when he said : "The Nation is 
rapidly growing in power and importance as compared with 
the States. Amendments to the Constitution increasing 
Federal power have been frequent, but whoever heard of 
one in the interest of the States? I have never believed in 
the extreme doctrine of State rights taught by many Demo- 
crats of the old school. My leaning has been toward a 
relatively strong central government, without giving up what 



THE STATE RIGHTS FETISH 235 

I deem essential to the States, but the pace of Federal 
encroachment which we have been traveling for 20 years 
has been too fast for me. I wish to see it slowed up, and 
a movement backward rather than forward. ..." 



Ill 

The same pervasive influences which played upon states 
and geographical sections and helped to mold their consti- 
tutional views have affected the attitude of political parties 
on questions of constitutional interpretation. But, in addi- 
tion, another element must be taken into account, arising 
from the psychology of politics : the party in power always 
feels that the Constitution, however broadly construed, is 
perfectly safe in its keeping, while the minority party is 
convinced that the welfare of the people demands that the 
majority should be restrained to a very narrow exercise of 
governmental authority. Hence the *Tns" have always 
tended to be strong nationalists, and the **Outs" strict con- 
structionists and advocates of state rights. 

American history is rich in illustrations of the instability 
of the constitutional beliefs of parties. The Jeffersonian 
Republican party originated in Washington's first adminis- 
tration as a party of strict construction and state rights. 
Jefferson's argument against the constitutionality of the 
United States Bank remained for many years the classic 
exposition of strict construction doctrine; and the Virginia 
and Kentucky resolutions, drawn up by Madison and Jeffer- 
son, proved a veritable Pandora's box of future state rights 
philosophy. It seemed to the Republicans that the Feder- 
alists, dominated by the broad construction views of Hamil- 
ton, were intent on converting the federal government into 
an engine of centralization and virtual monarchy, and that 
the nation could be saved from this fate only by a rigid 



236 NEW VIEWPOINTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

insistence that the government should abide by the phrase- 
ology of the Constitution literally construed. 

But when Jefferson and his party came into power, the 
need for applying brakes to the federal government became 
insensibly less important to them. The opportunity to 
acquire the vast territory of Louisiana from France in 1803 
showed Jefferson, greatly to his own surprise, how far he 
had drifted from his earlier convictions. In an amazingly 
frank letter written at the time, he confessed : "The consti- 
tution has made no provision for our holding foreign terri- 
tory. . . . The executive, in seizing the fugitive occurrence 
which so much advances the good of our country, have done 
an act beyond the constitution. The Legislature, in casting 
behind them metaphysical subtleties, and risking themselves 
like faithful servants, must ratify and pay for it, and throw 
themselves on the country for doing for them what we 
know they would have done for themselves had they been 
in a situation to do it." In other words, it was all right to 
violate the Constitution if Congress and the president 
thought that the mass of the voters approved. 

The change of front of the Republicans was only equalled 
by a similar reversal on the part of the Federalists. High 
priests of nationalism and broad construction while in power, 
Federalist leaders began to view with alarm the centralizing 
tenaencies of their successful opponents. In Congress they 
resisted the Louisiana cession as unconstitutional because 
the treaty provided for future membership in the Union. 
The Federalists were pledged to the development of com- 
merce and shipping; and the creation of new states out of 
the Louisiana wilderness meant new recruits for the agri- 
cultural policies of the Republicans. Acceptance of the 
Louisiana treaty would have been for them a form of polit- 
ical suicide. When the treaty was ratified in spite of their 
protests, some of the Federalist leaders plotted, in their 



THE STATE RIGHTS FETISH 237 

extremity, to bring about the secession of New England and 
New York from the Union. The adhesion of New York 
seemed to depend upon the election of Aaron Burr to the 
governorship in 1804; and when Burr proved unsuccessful, 
the conspirators were forced to defer their plans to a more 
propitious time. The nationalistic trend of the Republicans 
gave the Federalists many further causes for complaint in 
the next ten years and, as we have already seen, led finally 
to the assembling of the Hartford Convention in 181 4, under 
the inspiration of disgruntled Federalist politicians, to consult 
upon measures to restore New England to its ancient position 
in the Union. 

By 1 81 6 the Republicans had become thoroughly nation- 
alized, their remaining scruples being dispelled by the patri- 
otic impulses born of the War of 1812. The legislation 
passed by Congress in 1816 and 181 7 shows how complete 
the conversion was. Although the Republicans had refused 
to re-charter the First United States Bank in 181 1, the party 
now proceeded to create a Second United States Bank more 
than three times as large as the one Hamilton had founded. 
A protective tariff was also enacted; and had President 
Madison withheld his veto, a permanent fund would have 
been set aside for internal improvements at national expense. 

The attitude of two young members of this Congress 
deserves especial mention in this connection. Daniel Web- 
ster, a Federalist hailing from Massachusetts and not yet 
conscious of the relation of manufacturing to the future 
prosperity of his section, opposed all this nationalistic pro- 
gram. On the contrary, John C. Calhoun, of South Caro- 
lina, equally heedless of the role that cotton was soon to play 
in the prosperity of the South, was an eloquent advocate of 
broad construction. In words that he was never after per- 
mitted to forget, he denounced all tendencies toward section- 
alism and disunion, and declared that the Constitution "was 



238 NEW VIEWPOINTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

not intended as a thesis for the logician to exercise his 
ingenuity on" but should be construed in a generous spirit 
and with plain good sense. By 1830 the two men had ex- 
changed positions. With a truer appreciation of the sources 
of the economic prosperity of their respective sections, 
Webster became the greatest advocate of nationalism that 
the country possessed prior to the Civil War, and Calhoun 
became the inspired leader of the state rights extremists. 

There is no time to dwell upon the shades of difference 
between the Jackson Democrats and the Calhoun Democrats 
as to state rights doctrine. Suffice it to say that after 
Jackson retired from office the southern Democrats gained 
control of the party organization and, in very large part, 
stamped their peculiar views upon the party creed. Demo- 
cratic platforms adopted in 1840 and thereafter demanded 
a strict construction of the Constitution ("it is inexpedient 
and dangerous to exercise doubtful constitutional powers"), 
and specifically denounced the protective tariff, the United 
States Bank and national internal improvements. Yet, not- 
withstanding these earnest avowals, some of the most striking 
events of the period down to the Civil War came as a result 
of the exercise of broad construction powers by these very 
Democrats ! 

Although, as Jefferson had admitted in 1803, the Consti- 
tution nowhere expressly authorized the acquisition of 
foreign territory, the Democrats of this period proved to be 
the most aggressive expansionists in our history. Texas 
was annexed in 1845, followed three years later by the 
acquisition of a goodly portion of the neighboring republic 
of Mexico. Polk, Pierce and Buchanan, unsated, pressed 
forward schemes to annex Cuba and other Caribbeaii terri- 
tories. Equally clear was the illegality of internal improve- 
ments by a strict reading of the Constitution ; yet Jefferson 
Davis himself, as Secretary of War under Pierce, proposed 



THE STATE RIGHTS FETISH 239 

the construction of a transcontinental railway along a 
southern route at a cost estimated at perhaps one hundred 
million dollars to the federal government. President Pierce 
endorsed the project and it would probably have been adopted 
by Congress had not Stephen A. Douglas inopportunely 
revived sectional bitterness by the introduction of the 
Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854. 

Not less instructive was the attitude of the Democratic 
party toward the Dred Scott decision of 1857. As long as 
the Supreme Court remained a transmitter of doctrines un- 
favorable to southern interests, that tribunal had been assailed 
by state rights advocates as a usurper of unconstitutional 
powers. No principle had been more firmly fixed in state 
rights thinking than that the federal judiciary could not pass 
judgment on the constitutionality of the acts of the federal 
government. Now southern leaders everywhere endorsed 
this pro-slavery decision of the Supreme Court and, in the 
language of Stephen A. Douglas, maintained that ^'whoever 
resists the final decision of the highest judicial tribunal aims 
a deadly blow to our whole republican system of govern- 
ment." These lapses from state rights orthodoxy were with- 
out doubt dictated by the self-interest of the South, but in no 
wise detracted from the earnestness with which pro-slavery 
Democrats on all other occasions asserted their constitutional 
right of nullification and secession. 

In the first presidential campaign after Appomattox the 
Democrats hastened to clear their official creed of those 
elements of state rights doctrine that had been rendered 
obsolete by the Civil War. Their platform of 1868 recog- 
nized **the questions of slavery and secession as having been 
settled for all time to come by the war or the voluntary action 
of the Southern States in constitutional conventions as- 
sembled, . . . never to be renewed or reagitated." Hope- 
lessly in the minority for many years thereafter and dis- 



240 NEW VIEWPOINTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

trustful of the political capacity of the Republicans, the 
Democrats declared in their platforms again and again for 
a strict construction of the Constitution and denounced 
Republican "centralizationism." In 1892 and again in 191 2 
they even took the doctrinaire position that the protective 
tariff was a violation of the Constitution. 

Their criticism of the Republicans was fully warranted 
so far as it related to the undoubted fact that the power 
of the government at Washington was being greatly enlarged 
beyond the dreams of a Hamilton or a Webster. But the 
explanation for this centripetal trend lay deeper than party. 
In the era of great economic expansion following the Civil 
War, business overleaped state boundaries and became 
nationwide. Labor and education were likewise nationalized. 
The silent march of events was making a nationalistic pro- 
gram the inevitable code of action of the general government 
irrespective of which party might be in control. 

Extreme tariff protection, national supervision of state 
elections, lavish subsidies to railroads and other internal 
improvements — all these were Republican contributions to 
the new nationalism at the expense of a literal interpretation 
of the Constitution. But the advent of the Democrats to 
power in 1885 was marked by no attempt to reinvigorate 
the power of the states. A startling new assertion of 
national authority came in the passage of the Interstate 
Commerce Act, which President Cleveland signed; and in 
the case of the Pullman strike of 1893, he sent troops to 
Chicago in defiance of the traditional reading of the Consti- 
tution. In the latter instance Governor Altgeld of Illinois, 
who had refused to apply for federal assistance, felt called 
upon to remind the Democratic president that "The principle 
of local self-government is just as fundamental in our 
institutions as is that of federal supremacy." 

In the opening years of the twentieth century the artificial 



THE STATE RIGHTS FETISH 241 

nature of party gestures on constitutional questions has 
appeared clearer than ever before. Roosevelt in his admin- 
istration of the government proved to be an aggressive 
nationalist, and aroused the bitter animosity of the Demo- 
crats because of the alleged unconstitutional character of 
many of his acts. The Democratic platform of 1904 de- 
nounced the "strained and unnatural constructions upon 
statutes," stigmatized Roosevelt's interference in the Panama 
Revolution as unconstitutional, and called for the election 
of a president "v^ho will set his face sternly against executive 
usurpation of legislative and judicial functions, whether that 
usurpation be veiled under the guise of executive construc- 
tion of existing laws, or whether it take refuge in the tyrant's 
plea of necessity or superior wisdom." 

But the tables were turned with the accession of Wilson 
and his party to power in 191 3. Eager to meet the impera- 
tive need£ of the times, the Democrats used their power to 
pass law after law that could be justified only by a very 
elastic interpretation of the Constitution. A child labor law 
was placed upon the statute books in 1916, based upon the 
interstate commerce power of Congress; and when the act 
was pronounced unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, 
Congress proceeded to enact another law for the same 
purpose based upon the taxing power. The Federal Trade 
Commission Act, the Federal Reserve Act and the Federal 
Farm Loan Act represented other vast extensions of national 
authority by the Democrats. Of the Federal Reserve Act 
Senator Ramsdell, one of its southern supporters, said in an 
address before the Louisiana constitutional convention in 
1 92 1 that it "places colossal power in the Federal Govern- 
ment, a power which is intended for good . . . but . . . 
which in the hands of an ambitious autocrat or corrupt board 
can be used to work great evil." He further asserted that 
the Adamson Eight-Hour Law of 1916, establishing a 



242 NEW VIEWPOINTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

standard eight-hour day for the railroads, "steps on the 
toes of the States pretty hard and in many ways." 

When a country is engaged in war, one expects a great 
concentration of power in the hands of the government at 
Washington ; but even in this respect the Democratic admin- 
istration went to extremes. At President Wilson's behest, 
Congress passed the selective draft law; and this was soon 
followed by statutes vesting in the federal government far- 
reaching powers of control over railroads, telephones, fuel, 
food, prices, alcoholic beverages, and indeed over freedom 
of speech and of the press. However temporary some of 
these measures may have been in their importance, the 
Democratic Congress proposed two new amendments to the 
Constitution which invaded domains which had long been 
jealously guarded by the states, one providing for the aboli- 
tion of intoxicating liquors and the other forbidding the 
states to deny the suffrage to women. 

Many of these laws, particularly those adopted before the 
United States entered the World War, were hotly contested 
in Congress as unwarranted by the Constitution; and the 
Democratic president was bitterly denounced by his Repub- 
lican opponents for his ''unconstitutional and dictatorial 
course," just as Roosevelt had formerly been by the Demo- 
crats. In an almost perfect paraphrase of the Democratic 
platform of 1904, the Republican platform of 1920 said of 
President Wilson: "Under the despot's plea of necessity or 
superior wisdom. Executive usurpation of legislative and 
judicial functions . . . undermines our institutions." The 
chorus of opposition reached its climax when President 
Wilson returned from the Paris Peace Conference with the 
Covenant of the League of Nations. The Republican sena- 
tors, unable to reconcile themselves to a pact which they 
claimed bound the United States contrary to stipulations of 
the national Constitution, managed to prevent ratification by 
the United States. 



THE STATE RIGHTS FETISH 243 

IV 

The facts that have been presented in the foregoing dis- 
cussion speak for themselves. There can be no doubt that 
state rights agitation has played a large part in American 
history; but it is equally clear that the controversy must 
always be studied in its relation to time and circumstances. 
The state rights doctrine has never had any real vitality 
independent of underlying conditions of vast social, economic 
or political significance. The group advocating state rights 
at any period have sought its shelter in much the same spirit 
that a western pioneer seeks his storm-cellar when a tornado 
is raging. The doctrine has served as a species of protective 
coloration against the threatening onslaughts of a powerful 
foe. As a well-known American historian has tersely said, 
"Scratch a Wisconsin farmer and you find a Georgia 
planter !" 

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 

Beginning with the foundation of the federal government, in- 
numerable treatises have been written and addresses made upon 
the nature of the Union. These discussions were usually contro- 
versial in purpose and designed to supply historical reasons to show 
why the general government should enjoy greater or less authority 
in its relation to the states and the people thereof. Some of the 
greatest minds in our history have grappled with this central prob- 
lem of federated government, for example, James Madison, 
Alexander HamiUon, Thomas Jefferson, John Marshall, Joseph 
Story, Daniel Webster, John C. Calhoun and Abraham Lincoln ; and 
more recently the legal aspects of the problem have been learnedly 
discussed from an academic point of view by John W. Burgess, J. 
Allen Smith, W. W. Willoughby and others. For an excellent his- 
torical summary of American political theory dealing with the nature 
of the Union, see C. Edward Merriam's A History of American 
Political Theories (New York, 1903), chap, vii, and his American 
Political Ideas, 1865-1917 (New York, 1920), chap. yiii. 

The point of view, which forms the basis of the discussion in the 
present volume, was suggested by Alexander Johnston in John J. 
Lalor's Cyclopedia of Political Science, Political Economy and of 
the Political History of the United States (3 v.; New York, 1893), 
vol. iii, p. 794, so far as the relation of states to the federal govern- 
ment is concerned. Its detailed application in the case of particular 
states was worked out in David Franklin Houston's A Critical Study 



244 NEW VIEWPOINTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

of NuUiUcation in South Carolina (New York, 1896) ; William A. 
Schaper's "Sectionalism and Representation in South Carolina" in 
the Annual Report of the American Historical Association for 1900, 
vol. i, pp. 237-463 ; Ulrich Bonnell Phillips's "Georgia and State 
Rights" in the Annual Report of the American Historical Associa- 
tion for 1901, vol. ii; and later, in Charles Henry Ambler's Section- 
alism in Virginia from 1776 to 1861 (Chicago, 1910). In 1906 
appeared Herman V. Ames's compilation of official documents 
entitled State Documents on Federal Relations: The States and the 
United States (Philadelphia), a collection which showed that what 
held true in the case of South Carolina and Georgia was likewise 
true of the other states in their attitude toward the general govern- 
ment. Every student of American history would do well to be 
acquainted with Dean Ames's volume. 

Although the foregoing works are primarily concerned with the 
official attitude of the states on constitutional questions, the view- 
point readily furnishes a key to the constitutional doctrines of the 
great political parties. In the sketch in the present volume, some 
illustrations have been drawn from political history to show the 
changeable character of party views on the nature of the Constitu- 
tion. In this connection a violently partisan book entitled Logic of 
History. Five Hundred Political Texts: Being Concentrated Ex- 
tracts of Abolitionism; Also, Results of Slavery Agitation and 
Emancipation (Madison, 1864) is of interest. Annotated by S. D. 
Carpenter, a Copperhead editor, the work contains hundreds of 
excerpts from political speeches, party newspapers, and resolutions 
of local party conventions to show that expressions of strict con- 
struction and disunionism were by no means confined to the ante 
bellum Democratic party. It is perhaps worth noting that Alexander 
Johnston, who saw clearly the artificial character of the state rights 
theory as avowed by the several states, would probably not have 
agreed that the same conclusion held true of political parties. See 
passage in his History of American Politics (New York, 1882), 
p. 2. 



CHAPTER XI 

THE FOUNDATIONS OF THE MODERN ERA 



It is the custom of students of European history to place 
the beginning of modern times several centuries ago, indeed 
at about the time that Christopher Columbus set sail for 
America; and when one reviews the long painful struggle 
of Europe, reaching back into the dim mists of antiquity, 
to attain its present stage of civilization, no serious question 
can be raised with this practice.^ But the history of the 
white man in America is painted upon a smaller canvas ; the 
total period of time embraced is comparatively short; and 
the physical environment has been such as to reproduce many 
of the primitive social and institutional conditions which the 
progress of European peoples had long since rendered obso- 
lete in the Old World. Therefore it may be admissible to 
think of the modern era of America independently of the 
corresponding period in Europe; and without seeking to 
strain the analogy, there is an advantage in viewing the 
earlier history of America as divided into periods which are 
strongly suggestive of the ancient and medieval periods of 
European history. 

Ancient American history was, from the standpoint of 
the white man, the age of discovery and European coloniza- 
tion, and was itself preceded by a "pre-historic" period of 

* However, the suggestion of Harry Elmer Barnes, writing in the spirit of 
Wells's Outline of History, that modern times might more correctly be dated 
from neolithic man has large corrective value for the historical student. See 
"The Past and Future in History" in the Historical Outlook, vol. xii, p. 48 
(February, 1921). 



246 NEW VIEWPOINTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

native Indian civilizations, the records of which have come 
to us in the form of monuments, ornaments, and picture- 
writing. The keynote of ancient American history was the 
transplantation of an advanced civilization to a primitive and 
undeveloped world. The transition to the medieval period 
came when the English colonies, and later the Spanish 
colonies, severed political connections with the Old World 
by means of revolutionary wars for independence. In the 
case of the United States the Middle Period was charac- 
terized by the dissensions and jealousies of baronies (or 
states) with the growing power of the overlord (or federal 
government), and the entire national life was strongly tinc- 
tured by the plantation system of the South with its feudal 
lords and black vassals. 

Medieval American history was brought to a close by two 
epochal events. The first of these, the victory of the federal 
government in the Civil War, discredited forever the doctrine 
of state sovereignty and destroyed the anachronism of 
slavery. The other event was, in its lasting effects, more 
significant than the war itself, although, strangely enough, 
the historians of the period have little to say about it. This 
was the great economic revolution which swept through the 
nation at high tide from about i860 to 1880 and willy nilly 
projected America into Modern Times. 

Life in the United States before the Civil War had a 
peculiar static quality so far as the essentials of living were 
concerned. There were no great cities in our modern sense, 
and fewer than a half-dozen millionaires. People in general 
lived comfortably and waste fully. There was virtual equal- 
ity of material possessions and always an opportunity for 
the man who could not make a livelihood in the crowded 
portions of the country to make a clean start on the frontier. 
An old letter recently discovered in the files of the United 
States Patent Office shows that in 1833 the head of that 



FOUNDATIONS OF. THE MODERN ERA 247 

department wished to resign because he felt that the limit 
of human invention had been reached and there would be 
no further need of his services. 

To be sure, mute forces were working beneath the surface 
of American society that were prophetic of future changes ; 
but these were little heeded or understood at the time. There 
had occurred an industrial revolution in England in the latter 
part of the eighteenth century, the significance of which 
appeared in the introduction of the factory system into that 
country and the profoundly changed relations in industry 
and society that resulted. Under the influence of the em- 
bargo and the tariffs of 1816 and 1824, manufacturing had 
begun to develop in certain districts of the seaboard states 
of the North ; but the country as a whole was untouched by 
the factory system, being predominantly agricultural in its 
interests and modes of living. Nearly four-fifths of the 
people continued to live on the farm. 

In most respects the daily routine of Hfe with which 
Webster and Lincoln were familiar was the same as that 
of George Washington and Benjamin Franklin; and there 
was in no sense the profound contrast that we have between 
the times of Lincoln and those we live in today. As Pro- 
fessor Cubberley has pointed out, if Lincoln were to return 
now and walk about Washington, he would be surprised and 
bewildered by the things he would see. Buildings more than 
three or four stories high would be new. The plate-glass 
show windows of the stores, the electric street-lighting, the 
moving-picture theatres, the electric elevators in the buildings 
and especially the big department stores would be things in 
his day unknown. The smooth-paved streets and cement 
sidewalks would be new to him. The fast-moving electric 
street-cars and motor vehicles would fill him with wonder. 
Even a boy on a bicycle would be a curiosity. Entering the 
White House, someone would have to explain to him such 



248 NEW VIEWPOINTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

commonplaces of modern life as sanitary plumbing, steam 
heating, friction matches, telephones, electric lights, the 
Victrola, and even the fountain pen. In Lincoln's day, 
plumbing was in its beginnings, coal-oil lamps and gas-jets 
were just coming into use, and the steel pen had only recently 
superseded the quill pen. The steel rail, the steel bridge, 
high-powered locomotives, refrigerator cars, artificial ice, the 
cream separator, the twine binder, the caterpillar tractor, 
money orders, the parcels post, rural free delivery, the cable, 
the wireless, gasoline engines, repeating rifles, dynamite, sub- 
marines, airplanes — these and hundreds of other inventions 
now in common use were all alike unknown. 

A number of things conspired to introduce a new economic 
and social order into American life in the sixties and the 
seventies. The high war tariffs caused men of capital to 
invest their money in manufacturing; and government con- 
tracts for war supplies gave impetus to this development. 
The state and national governments embarked on a policy 
of making vast grants of land and credit to railroad enter- 
prises, thus laying the foundations for the modern era of 
railway development. The passage of the free homestead 
law of 1862 caused a rush of population toward the West, 
a movement that was vastly stimulated by the opening up 
of the less accessible regions by the railroads. These various 
factors reacted upon each other. Thus, the railroads called 
upon the factories for the manufacture of steel rails and 
locomotives, and by means of their iron highways supplied 
new markets for eastern manufacturers as well as for the 
western farmers. The unprecedented activity along all lines 
of economic endeavor imposed fresh demands upon Amer- 
ican inventive genius to which it responded with countless 
new appliances and machines for farm and factory. 

So rapid and comprehensive were the changes that oc- 
curred in the two decades following Lincoln's inauguration 



FOUNDATIONS OF THE MODERN ERA 249 

that no less a term than "economic revolution" is required 
to describe them. Referring particularly to American in- 
dustrial development, the United States Industrial Commis- 
sion declared in 1902 that "the changes and the progress since 
1865 have been greater in many directions than during the 
whole history of the world before." In contrast to the 
industrial revolution in England, however, the economic 
revolution was not merely a revolution in manufacturing 
processes. In just as significant a sense it was an agricul- 
tural revolution and also a revolution in transportation. The 
United States was transformed in a generation from a nation 
employing primitive methods of agriculture and importing 
most of her manufactures from abroad, into an industrialized 
country with an export trade in farm and factory products 
that reached the outer fringes of the globe. It is to this new 
economic basis of American life that the historian must 
ascribe the characteristic events of recent history — the new 
issues, the changed character of political parties, the growing 
conflict between capital and labor, our complex social prob- 
lems, indeed our very intellectual and cultural ideals and 
aspirations. 

The full force of these new energies was not immediately 
apparent, because the attention of the public, after the great 
emotional experience of the Civil War, was for the time 
being riveted upon certain perplexing questions concerning 
the emancipated negroes and the political reconstruction of 
the South. But with the truer perspective made possible by 
the passage of years the historians are beginning to give less 
attention to southern reconstruction and more to northern 
reconstruction, since the financial and industrial reorganiza- 
tion of the North has proved to be of greater enduring 
importance. 

Notwithstanding the transient importance of after-war 
issues, thoughtful people everywhere were conscious of an 



250 NEW VIEWPOINTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

impending change in the fundamentals of American life or 
of a change perhaps already accomplished. In 1871, Henry 
Ward Beecher, speaking in a prophetic sense, declared : "We 
are today in more danger from overgrown pecuniary inter- 
ests — from organized money — than we ever were from 
slavery, and the battle of the future is to be one of gold 
and silver." That amazing book published a few years ago, 
The Education of Henry Adams, has as its dominant recur- 
ring note the unwillingness or inability of a descendant of 
John and John Quincy Adams to accept the changed social 
order born of the economic revolution. In a revealing 
passage dealing with the great economic overturn, Henry 
Adams7 following his habit of speaking of himself in the 
third person, confessed: "the result of this revolution on 
a survivor from the fifties resembled the action of the earth- 
worm; he twisted about, in vain, to recover his starting- 
point ; he could no longer see his own trail ; he had become 
an estray ; a flotsam or jetsam of wreckage. . . . His world 
was dead. Not a Polish Jew fresh from Warsaw or Cracow 
. . . but had a keener instinct, an intenser energy, and a 
freer hand than he — American of Americans, with Heaven 
knew how many Puritans and Patriots behind him, and an 
education that had cost a civil war. . . . One comfort he 
could enjoy to the full. Little as he might be fitted for the 
work that was before him, he had only to look at his father 
[Charles Francis Adams] and [John Lothrop] Motley to 
see figures less fitted for it than he. All were equally sur- 
vivals from the forties — bric-a-brac from the time of Louis 
Philippe. ..." 

Political leadership naturally fell to men who were in 
harmony with the changed conditions of American life. The 
new school of statesmen were men of a practical stamp, not 
profound students of history like Madison nor keen theore- 
ticians like Calhoun nor great orators like Webster. They 



FOUNDATIONS OF THE MODERN ERA 251 

have been men of affairs interested in directing the energies 
of the government in such a way as to permit the rapid 
development of the natural resources of the country and the 
building up of gigantic business enterprises. Such questions 
as "sound money," government aids to industry, the protec- 
tive tariff and trust regulation became the dominant issues in 
politics. Some of these men were unscrupulous and cor- 
rupt ; but most of them were sincere and patriotic, believing, 
rightly or wrongly, that the national prosperity depended 
upon the accumulation of wealth in a few hands. The newer 
statesmanship was represented by such men as Roscoe Conk- 
ling of New York, James G. Blaine of Maine, Samuel J. 
Randall oi' Pennsylvania, and, a little later, by Marcus Hanna 
of Ohio and Nelson W. Aldrlcli of Rhode Island. All these 
men made a strong impression upon their contemporaries, 
but few of their names will live in history. While their 
prototypes are still common in American politics, the group 
as a whole reached the zenith of their power before 1900 
and have enjoyed less influence since. 

The reform spirit was not without its exponents within 
the ranks of the dominant parties after the Civil War; but 
even the reformers, such men as Grover Cleveland, George 
W. Curtis and Carl Schurz, did not quarrel seriously with 
the political objects of the men^ who were usually in power. 
They warred, rather, against inefficiency and corruption in 
the conduct of government. Their efforts secured ballot 
reform, civil service reform and the entering wedge of tariff 
reform ; but they never ceased to resent the charge that they 
were idealists or closet philosophers. It was Cleveland who 
expressed the thought of this earnest minority when he said 
in the course of fighting for one of his great reforms : *Tt is 
a condition that confronts us, not a theory." Indeed the idea 
of political reform for purely humanitarian objects has 
found a lodging place in the minds of effective party leaders 



252 NEW VIEWPOINTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

only since about 1900, and the new conception represented a 
reaction against the materialistic bent of the political gen- 
eration which had dominated public life down to that time. 

II 

The real significance of the economic revolution in the 
making of modern America is more readily seen upon a 
closer examination of the three great fields of transportation, 
agriculture and manufacturing, in which the chief changes 
occurred. 

In i860 there were thirty thousand miles of railroad in 
this country; this number had doubled by 1870 and trebled 
by 1880, being greatly increased by the building of the five 
transcontinental lines. By the close of the century it had 
reached the astounding total of almost two hundred thou- 
sand miles, equivalent to an eight-track railroad encircling 
the globe. The increase of mileage was attended by a 
growth of consolidation of management. Until about 1870, 
a railroad a few hundred miles in length constituted the 
maximum for efficient operation. A traveler from New 
York to the Mississippi might be required to make no less 
than a half dozen bodily transfers from one line to another. 
The Illinois Central, with seven hundred miles of track, was 
long considered one of the greatest railroads in the world. 
After 1870 began the development of "through lines," and 
the maximum length of a single railroad became five thou- 
sand miles. Since 1890, consolidation has progressed to new 
limits. Railroad systems have grown out of the amalgama- 
tion of through lines, some of them comprising twenty 
thousand miles of track under common control. The rail- 
way employees in 1900 represented an army of one million 
men, a number which has now swollen to two millions and 
which, including their families, means that today more than 
eight million persons are directly interested in the welfare of 
the railroad industry. 



FOUNDATIONS OF THE MODERN ERA 253 

The rapid expansion of the railroads, with its attendant 
shrinkage of distances, was of incalculable value in helping 
to bring together again the South and the North in a new 
unity of purpose. But more obvious to people at the time 
was the service of the railroads in facilitating the settlement 
of the West. The world was astonished at the rapidity with 
which the virginal spaces of the West were occupied. By 
1900 the Union had grown in forty years from thirty-three 
states to forty-five. Lands and natural resources which had 
seemed illimitable in i860 thus passed, in very large part, 
into the possession of private owners. By i8go the official 
frontier had vanished ; and the lands left in the government's 
keeping were not such as to attract settlers. 

As a result an important social force disappeared from 
American life. With this means of escape cut off, life has 
tended to become a bitter and sometimes hopeless struggle 
for men who cannot make their way against the fierce com- 
petition of the more populous sections of the country. Social 
conditions in the United States for the first time begin to 
approach the conditions of life in the Old World. In a 
somewhat tardy attempt to restore the earlier conditions of 
western settlement, the conservation movement, fathered by 
President Roosevelt, found one of its chief sources of in- 
spiration. Since 1900 commendable progress has been made 
by the government in irrigating arid lands, draining swamp 
lands, protecting mineral resources owned by the govern- 
ment, and providing for the replanting of deforested tracts. 

Another stream of influences flowed from the rapid 
growth of the railroads. The unscrupulous practices of the 
railroads in the early days of overcharging and discrimi- 
nating against the western settlers led to a great farmers' 
movement of protest in the seventies, which has found a 
place in history as the "Granger movement." The outcome 
of this early attempt of American farmers at organized 
action was the enactment of the first state legislation to regu- 



254 NEW VIEWPOINTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

late railroads ; and the acceptance of this novel principle by 
the states led in turn to its adoption by Congress in the 
Interstate Commerce Act of 1887. These laws were of 
epochal importance, for they represented the first system- 
atic effort of the government to cope with the growing evils 
of corporate wealth. 

While the agricultural revolution since the Civil War can 
not be considered apart from railroad expansion, it never- 
theless left its own peculiar impress upon the modern Ameri- 
can era. The farming industry grew at an unparalleled 
pace. Between 1870 and 1880 the farms of the nation were 
increased by an area equal to that of France; and between 
1880 and the end of the century a domain was added equal 
to the European area of France, England, Wales and the 
German Empire of 19 14. An important factor in this 
growth was the widely extended use of improved labor- 
saving machinery, including the substitution of horse power 
and steam power for manual labor, and the application of 
scientific methods to agriculture. The expansion of farm- 
ing was too rapid for the needs of the country; "overpro- 
duction" followed, causing low prices for crops and a pro- 
longed period of hard times for the rural population. The 
situation was aggravated by the fact that many of the 
farmers had borrowed heavily of eastern capitalists in order 
to finance their undertakings. According to the census of 
1890, the mortgage indebtedness of agricultural lands had 
increased from $343,000,000 to $586,000,000 in a period of 
ten years. A very large percentage of the farm properties 
west of the Mississippi was under mortgage at the time of 
the census; and very bad conditions were also to be found 
in the states east of the river. Between 1890 and 1895 
hundreds of settlers in the semiarid West were forced to 
give up their farms to the persons who held mortgages on 
them. In the South very similar conditions prevailed, where 



FOUNDATIONS OF THE MODERN ERA 255 

the lands devastated by the Civil War were in process of 
being brought under cultivation again and the old plantation 
system was being gradually replaced by small independent 
farms. 

These were ideal conditions for the fertilization of unrest 
and discontent; and so it happened that for many years the 
agricultural population proved to be a hotbed of radical 
agitation. Untrained in the intricacies of economics, their 
minds turned naturally to certain simple and plausible reme- 
dies to relieve their distresses; and the precariousness of 
their means of livelihood lent a religious zeal to their con- 
victions. Greenback inflation, free silver and Populism, all 
movements that bulk large in American history since the 
Civil War, recruited their chief strength in the farming 
states of the West and the South. It was not until about 
1900 that the rural population came to take their place as the 
great conservative force in American politics. From 1894 
down to 1900 a series of excellent crops of wheat and corn 
and an advance in the price of livestock occurred. Farm 
products also received preferential treatment in the Republi- 
can tariffs of 1890 and 1897; and after 1896 occurred an 
increase in the circulating medium of the country due to the 
discovery of new sources of gold supply. Thousands of 
mortgages on western farms were paid off with a consequent 
reduction of the rate of interest on farm loans. Farming 
thus became profitable again ; and the farmer became inter- 
ested in maintaining the status quo. With the outbreak of 
the World War unexpected difficulties faced the farmer ; and 
the last few years have witnessed a return of aggressive 
farmer organizations seeking to achieve more favorable con- 
ditions for agriculture. 

More significant than the revolution in transportation or 
even the agricultural revolution has been the transformation 
of our industrial system. The small beginnings in manu- 



256 NEW VIEWPOINTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

facturing made before the Civil War were completely 

eclipsed by the epochal developments since then. Indeed, 

according to the United States Industrial Commission re- 

1 porting in 1902, these developments constituted * 'probably 

'^ the most rapid change in the methods of industry observable 

l at any time in history." It would be tedious, even if it were 

5 practicable, to sketch the marvelous advances in invention 

and mechanism upon which the industrial revolution was 

based. The records of the Patent Office throw some light 

on the matter. In the entire period before i860, something 

less than 36,000 patents had been granted ; in the remaining 

years of the century the number of patents issued reached 

the astonishing total of almost 640,000. The widespread 

use of improved mechanical appliances meant more efficient 

processes, labor saving, and a great cheapening in the cost of 

production. 

Progress in invention was accompanied and fostered by 
improvements in the organization of industry. Manufac- 
turing carried on in a small plant was discovered to be less 
efficient and less economical than production upon a large 
scale. Industrial organizations have tended to grow until, in 
many lines, they include vastly more than a single great 
factory but a unified system comprehending many factories 
and making by-products and accessory products as well as 
the major product. Within twenty years after the close of 
the Civil War the trust and other forms of large industrial 
combination had begun to occupy their dominant position in 
modern American life. 

The industrial revolution was productive of colossal for- 
tunes for those who were **captains of industry" or who 
speculated successfully in the stocks and bonds of industrial 
corporations. Inequality of wealth such as was unknown in 
the early days of the republic became the accepted state of 
society. The United States passed through the millionaire 



FOUNDATIONS OF THE MODERN ERA 257 

era into the multimillionaire era and by 1900 emerged into 
the age of billionaires. 

While a comparative few were amassing enormous riches, 
vast numbers of men, women and children entered the fac- 
tories as wage earners, and the foundations were laid for that 
most difficult of all modern problems, the labor problem. 
The location of plants at strategic commercial points was 
responsible for a tremendous rnovement of people from the 
country into the great industrial centers and the massing of 
the factory workers into poor quarters and slum districts. 
As industries were virtually unregulated by law until the 
nineties, the situation of the working class in respect to 
wages, hours and conditions of labor was utterly wretched. 
Since the government at this period was unwilling to take 
aggressive measures for mitigating these conditions, the 
workingmen were forced to rely upon their own resources. 
Imitating the great combinations of capital, they combined 
together in trade unions and soon sought to create a national 
alliance of all workingmen for common purposes. The 
Knights of Labor arose in the late sixties and ran their 
checkered career until the middle eighties. Out of the ruins 
of this organization arose the American Federation of Labor, 
which continues to be the greatest and most powerful body 
of organized labor in the United States. Efforts were made 
from time to time to organize the laboring class politically; 
but labor parties were always short-lived and never attained 
any marked political success. The country became torn 
periodically by tremendous conflicts between capital and 
labor, involving the loss of countless lives and millions of 
dollars' worth of property. Finally the government was 
forced to step in and, by legislation, remove some of the 
worst evils from which the working class suffered. Many 
injustices, real and fancied, remained, however, and the 
accentuation of class feeling constitutes today the most 



258 NEW VIEWPOINTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

serious obstacle to the attainment of genuine national unity. 

Notwithstanding the accumulated grievances of the work- 
ing class the industrial revolution is not to be regarded as a 
calamity for the mass of the people. The final outcome has 
been an increase in the number of persons employed, a multi- 
plication of the productive power of the community, an 
enormous reduction in the price of all the comforts of life, 
and an extension of the range of human enjoyments. The 
drudgery and wasteful toil of life have been greatly lessened. 
Wages have continued to advance though often not as rap- 
idly as the cost of living ; the advantages of education have 
been multiplied and extended ; and health conditions in home 
and factory are better than ever before. As someone has 
pointed out, the average workingman can enjoy in his home 
lighting undreamed of in the days of tallow candles, warmth 
beyond the power of the old smoky soft-coal grate, kitchen 
conveniences that our New England ancestors would prob- 
ably have tliought sinful, and sanitary conditions and con- 
veniences beyond the reach of the wealthiest man even half a 
century ago. If the owner of the poorest tenement house in 
our cities today were to install the kind of plumbing that 
George Washington possessed, he would promptly be locked 
up as a menace to the health of the community. 

Large scale production with its great saving of labor has 
made it possible for labor unions to bring about a reduction 
in the hours of daily work. Hence people have leisure for 
personal enjoyment previously unknown. The trolley-car, 
the automobile, the amusement park and the "movies" have 
brought rest and recreation to millions of people who in 
earlier times knew only toil and whose pleasures consisted 
chiefly in church attendance, neighborhood gossip and alco- 
holic stimulants. 

The intelligent workingman does not deny these palpable 
facts ; but the crux of the problem, as he sees it, is his belief 



FOUNDATIONS OF THE MODERN ERA 259 

that the worker has not received a fair share of the enormous 
increase of wealth which has taken place in this country 
largely through his own grinding labor. 

Ill 

A marked characteristic of American history since the 
Civil War has been the development of new diplomatic in- 
terests. The changed direction of our foreign policy has 
been largely a consequence of the transformation of the 
United States from an importing nation requiring foreign 
capital for its economic development, to the greatest export- 
ing nation of the world, operating in large degree inde- 
pendently of outside financial aid. On the one hand, the 
vast growth of farm and factory production has demanded 
ample foreign markets; and on the other, the accumulation 
of surplus capital has sought opportunity for overseas invest- 
ment. The attention of our diplomats inevitably turned to 
the backward and undeveloped regions of the globe, particu- 
larly to those portions to which European enterprise had not 
yet penetrated. These materialistic motives found quick 
response in the traditional sympathy of the American people 
for less favored peoples and in the national faith in the 
uplifting influence of American ideals and institutions. 

So it happened that American foreign policy in the mod- 
ern period has been chiefly engaged in the annexation of 
islands in the Pacific Ocean, the promotion of trade and 
investments in the Far East, the construction of an inter- 
oceanic canal, and the fostering of commerce with Latin 
America. These new impulses reached their full momentum 
at the turning of the century, when, in a space of three years, 
Hawaii, Tutuila, the Philippines, Guam and Porto Rico were 
annexed ; Cuba was converted into a protectorate ; the United 
States proclaimed the policy of an "open door" for foreign 
trade in China; and the Hay-Pauncefote treaty cleared the 



II 



\l 



260 NEW VIEWPOINTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

way for the building of an isthmian canal under American 
control. By these events America was forced to issue from 
her chrysalis of isolation and take her place as a world power 
with a potential voice in the affairs of Europe, Asia and 
Africa. 

It is not going too far to say that the Monroe Doctrine to- 
day has become largely an economic policy. Formerly the 
Monroe Doctrine was wholly political, aiming to prevent the 
further extension of European governmental systems to the 
soil of the New World. Purely economic operations and 
engagements were unknown to it. But, as Professor Ogg 
has pointed out, the United States was gradually forced to 
recognize that the investment of foreign capital in a back- 
ward Latin American country may easily lead to economic 
absorption and that economic absorption is likely to result in 
political control. Hence the Monroe Doctrine as we know it 
today is largely concerned with converting into American 
protectorates those countries whose financial laxness might 
tempt creditor nations to intervene in their affairs, and with 
discouraging foreign capitalists and corporations from 
acquiring lands and other concessions in Latin America on 
such a scale as to foreshadow political control. 

In a very different sense the United States has contracted 
a series of difficult foreign relations through the invasion of 
our shores by great hordes of immigrants. The alluring 
prospects of employment and wealth opened up by the eco- 
nomic revolution in this country attracted European peasants 
in unprecedented numbers to our farms and factories, rail- 
roads and mines. Their presence has yielded its benefits as 
well as its evil results ; but, however viewed, modern Ameri- 
can life has been rendered infinitely more complex by reason 
of their coming. The problem of the assimilation of the 
alien ranks with the labor problem in its gravity for the 
future welfare of America. 



FOUNDATIONS OF THE MODERN ERA 261 

IV 

But the basic importance of the economic revolution to an 
understanding of modern America cannot be dismissed with 
a consideration of these concrete aspects of material and 
political development. What Mencken has termed, in sar- 
donic vein, *'the whole, gross, glittering, excessively dynamic, 
infinitely grotesque, incredibly stupendous drama of Ameri- 
can life" has its sources in the new economic substructure of 
American society of the last sixty years. The high degree 
of specialization and the keen competition among individuals, 
exacted by the compulsions of modern existence, have lent a 
feverish intensity to living. Santayana has said of the con- 
temporary American, with an element of truth, that "All his 
life he jumps into the train after it has started, and jumps 
out before it has stopped, and never once gets left behind or 
breaks a leg." There is a tendency for the American people 
to live on the latest sensations and exhaust themselves with 
superficial emotions. The "pursuit of happiness," proclaimed 
by the Declaration of Independence as an inalienable right, 
has ceased to be a leisurely and beguiling occupation and has 
become a frenzied and breathless chase. The ceaseless 
activity and the jaded mental condition characteristic of the 
average American outside of business hours have led him to 
value brevity and hurry above all other virtues. Symptoms 
of this state of mind are to be found on every hand — in 
"short orders" in the restaurants, vaudeville in the theaters, 
headline summaries in the newspapers, short stories in 
literature. 

The prodigious strides made by science in the modern 
period and the demand for industrial efficiency have placed a 
premium upon the cultivation of the practical and the actual 
in all departments of human thought and endeavor. In the 
sphere of education the older ideals of a liberal education 



262 NEW VIEWPOINTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

have been forced to yield to the demands for specialized and 
technical training. Due to the early importance of farming 
in our national economy, agricultural education was the first 
of the vocational subjects to be taken over by the schools and 
the colleges. In the eighties the high schools began to offer 
courses in manual training, business, and household econ- 
omy ; and gradually these subjects found places in the college 
curriculum. Today, we are told on high authority, our 
schools are no longer "mere disciplinary institutions where 
drill is given in the mastery of the rudiments of knowledge" 
but "institutions of democracy calculated to train for useful 
service in the office, the shop and the home, and intended to 
prepare young people for intelligent participation in the 
increasingly complex social and political life of our demo- 
cratic society." The new direction and ideals of education 
have awakened a popular interest and support unknown to 
those simpler times when a man who had mastered the 
"three R's" could cope sufficiently well with the problems of 
life. 

In literature the romantic school typified by Cooper, 
Irving and Hawthorne has succumbed to the realistic art of 
Howells and James, the dialect and local color writing of 
Harte and Mark Twain, and the sociological fiction of Frank 
Norris and Upton Sinclair. Our writers perceived the 
literary possibilities presented by the new America and 
sought to interpret and photograph the multifold aspects of 
the modern scene. An amazing new literature appeared, 
born of the people, for the people and by the people. 

The same influences coursed through American music. 
Before the Civil War there was very little appreciation of 
music even by cultivated people. That great conflict was 
fought by soldiers singing songs, most of which had been 
composed in the Old World. Since then, music has been 
both vulgarized and popularized. The principal output of 



FOUNDATIONS OF THE MODERN ERA 263 

American composers has been "popular music," seeking 
however crudely to express the new meanings and energies 
of American life. The period since Appomattox might be 
divided into the epoch of plantation melodies and "coon 
songs," the era of "ragtime," and the contemporary age of 
"jazz." But tbe apostles of the higher forms of music have 
had no reason for discouragement. Although the output of 
serious American music has been comparatively small and 
often imitative, some compositions of genuine beauty and 
individuality have been produced, notably the work of 
Edward MacDowell. Every large city today has its symphony 
orchestra and music courses ; and American inventive genius 
has, by means of the phonograph, carried music of undying 
beauty into a million homes. 

In the field of history the social point of view has become 
the characteristic mark of the present generation of his- 
torians; and the very concept of an "economic interpretation 
of history" is the product of an industrial age. Contem- 
porary philosophy has become pragmatic in its treatment of 
ethics and naturalistic in dealing with the problems of meta- 
physics. Religion has turned from the contemplation of 
theological abstractions and is seeking to apply its precepts to 
the stubborn realities of modern life, or else to base its 
appeal upon the assurance of physical health as well as 
spiritual peace. Even the conservative spirit of the law has 
gradually undergone a process of socialization in an effort to 
adjust itself to living social, economic and political facts; 
and "mechanical jurisprudence" is reluctantly but inevitably 
yielding to the new school of "sociological jurisprudence." 

Perhaps most significant of all is the new political philos- 
ophy which, with each passing decade, has gained fresh 
converts among the leaders of public opinion. The former 
ideal of laisses faire — ^the right of individuals to compete 
unrestrictedly with each other without governmental regula- 



264 NEW VIEWPOINTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

tion — was well adapted to the conditions prevailing before 
the economic revolution, when land and natural resources 
were plentiful and cheap. But with the increasing complexi- 
ties of modern life the feeling has grown that the liberty and 
opportunities of the individual can be properly safeguarded 
only by the protective oversight of the government. Con- 
ditions in the United States have not reached that degree of 
wretchedness which would give Socialism or Communism a 
strong popular appeal ; and the dominant thought of America 
is agreed that intelligent social control furnishes the best 
preventive of ruthless individualism, on the one hand, and of 
government paternalism on the other. 

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 

The great arsenal of information on the economic transformation 
of the United States since the Civil War is the Report of the United 
States Industrial Commission (19 v.; Washington, 1900-1902). The 
final volume is particularly useful. The student, however, should 
not overlook the detailed study made by David A, Wells in 1889 of 
the changes of the preceding quarter of a century, entitled Recent 
Ecojiomic Changes and Their Effect on the Production and Distribu- 
tion of Wealth and the IV ell-Being of Society (New York). Al- 
though the revolutionary character of the changes is fully recognized 
in both of these works, the specific term, "economic revolution," 
seems to have been first used by Charles A. Beard in his American 
Government and Politics (New York, 1910) and again in his Con- 
temporary American History, 1877-igis (New York, 1914). The 
term has not yet won general acceptance by the historians, the less 
accurate one of "industrial revolution" being ordinarily employed. 

The facts of the economic revolution are excellently summarized 
in Katharine Coman's The Industrial History of the United States 
(New York, 1905), pp. 265-343; Ernest Ludlow Bogart's The 
Economic History of the United States (New York, 1907), part iv 
(especially good) ; Emory Richard Johnson and others' History of 
Foreign and Domestic Commerce of the United States (2 v. ; Wash- 
ington, 1915), vol. i, chap. XV ; Arthur W. Calhoun's A Social His- 
tory of the American Family (3 v.; Cleveland, 1917-1919), vol. iii, 
chap, iv; and Ellwood P. Cubberley's Public Education in the 
United States (Boston, 1919), chap. xi. The agricultural phases of 
the revolution have been studied separately by Louis Bernard 
Schmidt in his article "Some Significant Aspects of the Agrarian 
Revolution in the United States" in the Iowa Journal of Politics 
and History, vol. xviii (1920), pp. 371-395. 



FOUISTDATIONS OF THE MODERN ERA 265 

The present writer's view as to the vital relationship of the 
economic revolution to an understanding of all aspects of modern 
American life and society was presented in an article entitled "The 
Problem of Teaching Recent American History" in the Historical 
Outlook, vol. xi (1920), pp. 352-355- The first chapter of Charles 
Edward Merriam's American Political Ideas, 1863- igi^ (New York, 
1920) is a brilliant exposition of the fundamental factors of the 
period. The same point of view has been worked out, with more ot 
less conscious intent, in Charles A. Beard's Contemporary American 
History, 1877-1913 (already cited), chaps, ii, iii, iv, ix ; Frederic L. 
Paxson's The New Nation (Boston, 1915), especially chap, vi; Paul 
L. Haworth's The United States in Our Oivn Times, i86yig20 (New 
York, 1920), especially chap, x; and best of all in Charles Ramsdell 
Lingley^s Since the Civil War (New York, 1920), chaps, iii, ix, xi, 
xiv, xxii. 

The most extensive treatment of the modern period of American 
history to 1917 may be found in vols. 22-27 of The American Nation: 
a History (Albert Bushnell Hart, ed. ; New York, 1905-1918), 
written by William Archibald Dunning, Edwin Erie Sparks, Davis 
R. Dewey, John H. Latane and Frederic Austin Ogg. These 
volumes give attention to social and economic factors as well as 
to political, constitutional and diplomatic developments. 

The unity of the recent period is being clearly recognized by 
students of the cultural and intellectual history of the United States. 
Of such volumes the following are particularly valuable: Charles 
F. Thwing's A History of Education in the United States Since the 
Civil War (Boston, 1910) ; Fred Lewis Pattee's A History of 
American Literature Since 18/0 (New York, 1917) ; Ellwood P. 
Cubberley's Public Education in the United States (already citedj, 
chaps, xi-xv; Charles Edward Merriam's American Political Ideas, 
1865-191/ (already cited) ; and James Melvin Lee's History of 
American Journalism (Boston, 1917), pp. 317-450. 



CHAPTER XII 

THE RIDDLE OF THE PARTIES 



With the ratification of the nineteenth amendment shortly 
before the presidential election of 1920, several miUions of 
women received the right to use the ballot for the first time. 
Gloomy predictions had been made, time and again, that this 
extension of the suffrage boded ill for the vi^elfare of the 
nation because of the inability of the feminine mind to com- 
prehend poHtical matters. The election has receded far 
enough into the past for us to see now, with clearer vision, 
that the chief obstacle in the way of intelligent voting by the 
women was not their fancied mental inferiority in political 
matters but rather the incapacity of the political parties to 
make themselves intelligible to the women. 

What was so dramatically revealed in the campaign of 
1920 was not a new thing in our recent political history. 
Every year has witnessed the entry of a million or more 
new partners into our great democracy — young men newly 
attaining the age of twenty-one, and foreign-born citizens 
fresh from their final naturalization papers. These new 
voters have all been confronted with the same need to align 
themselves with parties that faced the huge battalions of 
women voters in 1920. 

The importance of making a reasoned decision need not be 
argued in a country in which the motive power of govern- 
ment is generated by parties. Such a choice would not be, 

266 



THE RIDDLE OF THE PARTIES 267 

and should not be, the same for all voters ; but it is supremely 
important that the selection, whatever it be, should be made 
upon the basis of unbiased information and of an indepen- 
dent judgment of the principles and policies for which each 
party standsJHence if our government is to be motivated by 
the collective intelligence of the citizens, it follows that every 
facility should be afforded voters to discover the truth about 
the political parties through which they must act. ' 

Whatever may have been true of certain periods of the 
past, every new voter who has sought to cast a conscientious 
ballot in recent elections will agree that our democratic 
methods of government have failed at this critical point. 
VThere seems to be a conspiracy, not of silence but of volu- 
bility, to conceal the real meaning of parties./ Efforts of 
intelligent citizens to penetrate the darkness and confusion 
surrounding party meanings have too frequently caused 
them to react in disgust or in consequent indifference there- 
after to the political life of the nation ; or else the individual, 
in lieu of anything better, has allowed his party loyalty to be 
dictated by the social pressures of the community in which he 
lives or by the inherited prejudices of his clan. 

One of the most alarming tendencies of contemporary 
times in the United States has been the steady decline in the 
proportion of citizens who perform their periodical functions 
at the polls. Not only is this true in state and local elections 
but in national elections as well. This tendency has been 
most marked since the McKinley-Bryan campaign of 1896; 
and its lowest point was reached in the last presidential con- 
test (1920) when about half of the citizens entitled to vote 
went to the polls. Many factors have contributed to this 
phenomenon, but an important element has undoubtedly been 
the failure of the major parties to convince the voters that 
they represent clearly differentiated bodies of opinion. 

The mental confusion of the average man is readily under- 



268 NEW VIEWPOINTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

stood when many signs lead him to believe that there are, in 
fact, no essential differences between the major parties. 
Thus, prior to the national conventions of the presidential 
campaign of 1920, the New York World, a traditional Demo- 
cratic organ of vast influence, announced its readiness to 
support Herbert Hoover for president regardless of which 
party might nominate him. And the Saturday Evening Post 
with its mammoth reading public called upon the great 
parties to join in making Mr. Hoover their presidential 
choice. Mr. Hoover at that time was engaged in sternly 
disavowing that he was a party man in any orthodox sense 
although he subsequently reached the conclusion that he was 
a member of the Republican party. \ The impression has 
undoubtedly won wide acceptance in 'the country that the 
great parties are like two armies that have been sitting oppo- 
site each other for so long a timQ that they have forgotten 
the original cause of their quarrel. ] 

II 

How, then, can one learn what the parties stand for? 
Party platforms originated back in Jackson's day for the 
express purpose of clarifying such matters for the voter in 
advance of the election ; but since that time, they have tended 
to degenerate into collections of pleasant generalities that 
are more likely to bewilder than enlighten the inquiring voter. 
The popular attitude toward them has become one of indif- 
ference or cynicism, because of the pr oneness of a party to 
straddle the principal issues and its likelihood of disregarding 
its other pledges should it succeed in winning the election. 
Indeed it is not too much to say that the chief function of a 
party platform today is one of internal importance. For 
reasons that will be noted later, the typical platform is a 
treaty of amity designed to compose differences among dis- 
cordant elements of the party for the duration of the cam- 



THE RIDDLE OF THE PARTIES 269 

paign and to permit the party to present a united front 
against the common enemy. 

<^One reads the platforms in vain for those statements of 
fundamental differences and tendencies which might consti- 
tute a clarion call to a citizen to identify the public welfare 
with the one party rather than the other. When such at- 
tempts at definition are made, as in the platforms of 1908, 
the promise falls far short of fulfillment. It may be helpful 
for the voter to learn from the Republican platform that 
"The trend of Democracy is toward socialism, while the 
Republican party stands for a wise and regulated individual- 
ism"; but what is he to think upon discovering from the 
Democratic platform that "The Democratic party is the 
champion of equal rights and opportunities to all; the 
Republican party is the party of privilege and private 
monopoly" ? 

^ Next to these official declarations of party belief, the voter 
is forced to turn to partisan newspapers and campaign ora- 
tors for the information he seeks. , Here again he encounters 
difficulties: who would trust a lover for an unbiased and 
dispassionate opinion of his sweetheart? A copy of the 
London Chronicle of May 8, 1766, yellowed with age, ex- 
presses a conviction that bears the fresh impress of truth 
today, so far as party liegemen are concerned : "Party is a 
fever that robs the wretch under its influence of common 
sense, common decency, and sometimes common honesty ; it 
subjects reason to the caprices of fancy, and misrepresents 
objects; ... we blame and pity bigotry and enthusiasm in 
religion ; . . . are party principles less reprehensible, that, in 
a worse cause, are apt to intoxicate and disorder the brain, 
and pervert the understanding?" The attitude of John 
Randolph of Roanoke toward the Whig party of his time 
may be taken to represent the viewpoint of the orthodox 
party man toward the opposition party. The Whigs, de- 



270 NEW VIEWPOINTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

dared Randolph, have exactly seven principles, "five loaves 
and two fishes." Better for the voter than one partisan 
organ are two newspapers representing opposite sides of the 
discussion ; but the determination of the truth on the basis of 
such evidence would require the faculties of an expert in 
historical research and the wisdom of a Solomon. 

Perhaps in particular cases there may be other and less 
obvious channels of information open to the diligent seeker ; 
but in final analysis the conclusion is unavoidable that the 
only way to ascertain the truth about party principles is the 
thorny path of finding out how the party originated, what 
influences shaped its development, and what seem to be its 
present sympathies and impulses. In other words, if polit- 
ical parties are, in any degree at all, coherent and developing 
bodies of opinion, it is not wise to pass judgment on a party 
from the cross-section of its policies that is exposed to one's 
gaze in the heat and smoke of a particular political cam- 
paign. ' Only from an historical view, properly understood, 
can one arrive at a well-considered opinion concerning the 
present fitness and future development of parties. 

Ill 

The Republican party is the younger of the two major 
parties, having been founded within the memory of many 
men still living. It took form in the fall of 1854 as a fusion 
of the anti-slavery elements of the Whig and Democratic 
parties with the preexisting Free Soilers or 'Tree Demo- 
crats." ! Its fundamental tenet was the non-extension of 
slavery beyond the southern states in which the institution 
was deeply rooted! but it waged battle with the ''Slave 
Power" in all the efforts of the latter to dictate the policy of 
the government. The new party quickly attracted into its 
fold the wage-earners of the northern cities and most of the 
newly-arrived immigrants, not only because of the inherent 



THE RIDDLE OF THE PARTIES 271 

opposition of slave labor and free labor but, more specifically, 
because of the plan of the "Slave Power" to discourage free 
settlement in the western territories by the establishment of 
the slavery system there. The issue was made unmistakably 
clear to the common people of the North when in June, i860, 
President Buchanan, acting under southern influence, vetoed 
a homestead bill that had originated in the Republican 
House of Representatives. Through its generous idealism 
the party also won a wide support among the church-goers 
of the North as well. 

The creed of the new Republican party was a radical, if 
not a revolutionary, one. Its great leaders, William H. 
Seward and Abraham Lincoln, had both been guilty of public 
utterances that were regarded at the time as little short of 
incendiary, Seward when he declared that there was "a 
higher law than the Constitution," and Lincoln when he 
charged the chief justice of the United States Supreme Court 
with having knowingly engaged in a great pro-slavery con- 
spiracy to extend slavery into all the territories. The finan- 
cial interests of the East viewed the growth of the new party 
with alarm; and on the eve of the Lincoln campaign of i860, 
it was reported that William B. Astor had contributed one 
million dollars to encompass the defeat of the Republicans in 
New York. 

The new party was successful in winning the presidency 
within six years of its birth, principally because the ranks of 
the opposition party were sundered in the campaign. By 
the time President Lincoln was inaugurated in 1861, most of 
the slaveholding states had already declared themselves out- 
side of the Union ; and this new party, inexperienced, hetero- 
geneous and unaware of its own potential strength, was 
confronted with the most stupendous task that a political 
party has ever had to undertake in American history. How 
the Lincoln administration mobilized the spiritual and mate- 



2^2 NEW VIEWPOINTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

rial resources of the North, preserved the Union and abol- 
ished slavery is part of a larger story than the history of a 
single party; but the consequences were pregnant with sig- 
nificance for the later development of the Republican party. 
(The very completeness of the success attained by the 
Republicans in carrying through their anti-slavery program 
became the party's greatest menace at the close of the wa;;^ 
With the destruction of slavery and the "Slave Power/' 
there was no logical reason for the continuance of the party 
of Lincoln and Seward, unless new and vital issues of per- 
manent importance should be added to the party creed. 
How was the party to insure self-preservation? The task of 
reconstructing the South and securing the rights of the 
freedmen was a direct consequence of the war policy of the 
Republicans ; and for several years after the war their ener- 
gies were largely absorbed in dealing with this complex and 
unprecedented problem. Meantime, mute powerful forces, 
set in motion by the economic revolution through which the 
country was then passing, were preparing to supply the party 
with the badly needed new policies. 

Contrary to a widely held opinion today, no national 
Republican platform had ever declared for a protective tariff 
prior to 1872, save only the platform of i860 when a delib- 
erate political play was made to capture the support of the 
iron districts of Pennsylvania. Nevertheless, the Republi- 
cans had been forced to enact high protective tariffs as a war 
revenue measure; and under shelter of these enactments a 
new and mighty manufacturing class had come into existence. 
The manufacturers, the railroad enterprisers and the finan- 
cial interests generally sought refuge in the dominant party, 
demanded that protection be continued as a permanent policy 
of the government and that other energetic measures be 
adopted to foster the material development of the nation. 
The nationalistic temper of the Republican party, born of the 



THE RIDDLE OF THE PARTIES 273 

Civil War, lent a certain idealistic tinge to all such demands ; 
and from 1868 on, the party platforms began to reflect, 
pretty faithfully, the ideals and aims of the dominant eco- 
nomic interests of the age. The great tenets of Republican- 
ism during the remaining years of the century became such 
questions as the protective tariff and "sound money," and in 
general a reluctance to cramp or curb the processes of busi- 
ness enterprise. The party had thus passed from a party of 
radical humanitarianisni to a party of business conservatism. 
But the almost uninterrupted success of the Republicans 
for many years following the war cannot be accounted for 
solely by the new economic affiliations of the party. The 
party had won a deep and abiding hold on the affections of 
the people of the North because, as it seemed to many, it had 
been the instrument of Providence in saving the nation in its 
time of trial and stress. The political thinking of the gen- 
eration which had taken part in the war was dominated by 
that great crisis; and to the minds of many northerners it 
was nothing short of disloyalty to the flag to vote anything 
but the straight Republican ticket. For twenty -five years 
following the war, Republican platforms opened with im- 
passioned reminders of the past glories of the party; and 
campaign orators of the party lost no chance to assail the 
opposition party as traitors in the late war. In political par- 
lance such manoeuvres were called "waving the bloody 
shirt'*; and the effectiveness of this practice was heightened 
by the generous bids for the soldier vote which the Republi- 
cans made through pension legislation. These emotional 
appeals furnished Republican leaders with a means of 
diverting public attention at times when the party was guilty 
of bad government and made it possible to develop almost 
undisturbed their new economic policies. James G. Blaine, 
one of the great party chieftains of the period, is an example 
of a man who never tired of "waving the bloody shirt," but 



274 NEW VIEWPOINTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

his political integrity has been forever clouded in American 
history by his dubious, if not illicit, relations, while in public 
position, with railroad corporations. 

IV 

Let us now turn aside from the Republican party as that 
great organization had developed by the closing years of the 
nineteenth century and consider the record of its chief rival, 
the Democratic party. The history of the Democratic party 
may, in a sense, be said to be coextensive with that of the 
Constitution, although in its early years the party was as 
often called Republican as Democratic. It made its appear- 
ance in Washington's administration as a protest against the 
aristocratic and centralizing tendencies of the Federalist 
party then in power. Under the leadership of Thomas 
Jefferson it gathered to itself the support of the agricultural 
interest — northern farmers, southern planters and western 
pioneers — and in the fourth presidential election (1800) it 
swept the Federalists into a defeat from which they never 
recovered. For the first sixty years of the nineteenth cen- 
tury the party dominated the national political scene and was 
even more continuously in power than the Republicans have 
been since then. Under its second great leader, Andrew 
Jackson, the party received a new impulse toward democ- 
racy ; so that it has been said that Jefferson stood for govern- 
ment "of the people and for the people" while Jackson added 
"by the people." 

Shortly after Jackson's retirement, the party entered upon 
a new phase of its development when it fell under the con- 
trol of its southern leaders and became devoted to the ad- 
vancement of pro-slavery interests. Thus it happened that 
in the twenty-year period before the outbreak of the Civil 
War the Democrats insensibly came to lay less emphasis on 
popular rights and to stress increasingly doctrines and prin- 



THE RIDDLE OF THE PARTIES 275 

ciples which would promote and entrench the prosperity of 
the cotton capitalists. The secession movement of 1 860-1 861 
was engineered by southern Democratic leaders ; and the out- 
break of the war saw the northern Democracy sadly divided 
among those who frankly joined the Republicans in a whole- 
hearted support of the Lincoln administration, those who 
continued the party organization on a program of criticism 
of the conduct of the war, and those who sought to commit 
the party to a policy of immediate peace at any cost. It was 
to the last group that the name "Copperheads" properly 
applied; but in the public mind the whole party became 
inseparably identified with the doctrine of disloyalty and 
disunionism. 

If the close of the Civil War raised a problem of self- 
perpetuation for the Republicans, the situation of the Demo- 
crats was infinitely more difficult. Disorganized and leader- 
less, its ante helium issues obsolete, discredited in the North 
by its war record, its southern supporters largely disfran- 
chised, the party faced dissolution, or else must pin its faith 
to its ability to profit by the mistakes of the self-confident 
Republicans. The next twenty years constituted the most 
critical period in Democratic history. That picturesque 
Democrat Henry Watterson, who knew these times as an 
actor in them, wrote many years later of *'the ancient label 
of a Democracy worn by a riffraff of opportunists, Jeffer- 
sonion principles having gone quite to seed." The remark- 
able thing is that the party managed to survive ; and for this 
miracle the Republican party may, in very large degree, be 
held responsible. 

In the first place, the reconstruction policy of the Republi- 
cans affronted and humiliated the southerners, who bitterly 
resented carpetbag misrule and negro ascendancy at a time 
when the natural leaders of the native white population were 
disfranchised by federal enactment. As the states one after 



2^(i NEW VIEWPOINTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

the other recovered their full political rights, their ante 
helium antipathy for the Republican party was unutterably 
deepened by angry memories of the reconstruction period. 
The southern whites promptly deprived the negroes of the 
suffrage; and the ex-Confederate states reentered national 
politics as a solidly Democratic section. Hence the "Solid 
South" constituted a substantial nucleus about which the 
Democrats of the North might expect to rebuild their part^ 
It meant, for instance, in the election of 1880 ninety-ffve 
electoral votes, out of a total of three hundred and sixty-nine, 
which the party could secure for its candidate without an 
effort and irrespective of the issues at stake.^ To this irre- 
ducible minimum might ordinarily be added the electoral 
votes of the other ex-slave states, Missouri, Kentucky, 
Maryland and Delaware, amounting in 1880 to thirty-five. 

Furthermore, the overconfidence of the Republicans in 
their national administration furnished excellent opportuni- 
ties for the Democratic minority. The presidency of Gen- 
eral Grant was marked by a series of scandals and revelations 
of corruption which involved many high officials of the gov- 
ernment. .Republican mistakes spelled Democratic oppor- 
tunity.. The Democrats took advantage of the situation to 
nominate Samuel J. Tilden, who had won a reputation for 
reform in New York politics ; and supported by a widespread 
popular dissatisfaction, they almost succeeded in electing 
him in the campaign of 1876. Warned by this experience, 
the Republicans became more cautious in the type of candi- 
dates they nominated and in their conduct in office; and 
Democratic fortunes again ebbed until 1884 when the Repub- 
lican organization, in defiance of the protests of Theodore 
Roosevelt and other young leaders of the party, offered 
James G. Blaine as their presidential nominee. The Demo- 

^ The first break in the Solid South came in 1920 when Tennessee gave its 
electoral vote to Harding. 



THE RIDDLE OF THE PARTIES 2'J^ 

crats gleefully revived their tactics of eight years before, and 
nominated Grover Cleveland, the reform governor of New- 
York, on a platform which, save for its destructive criticism 
of the record of the Republicans, differed in no vital respect 
from the platform of the opposition party. 

This time the Democrats were successful ; and Cleveland 
found himself president of a party whose ''cardinal princi- 
ples," as he himself confessed, had in recent years been 
''relegated to the rear and expediency substituted as the hope 
of success." To Cleveland fell the choice of continuing this 
course of vacillation and opportunism, or of endowing the 
party with a constructive fighting program. To a man of 
Cleveland's uncompromising characteristics only the latter 
course was possible. Before his first term was completed, he 
had definitely committed the party to the principle of a rev- 
enue tariff although Democratic policy on the tariff had been 
ill-defined since the war or even inclined to protectionism. 
He had courted the enmity of the old-soldier element by his 
dogged determination to eliminate laxness and fraud in the 
granting of pensions ; and in general h§ had stood for econ- 
omy in governmental expenditures. Cleveland occupied the 
same relationship to the party after the Civil War that 
Jefferson and Jackson had, in turn, in the earlier history of 
the party. The Democrats entered the campaign of 1888 as 
a party regenerated, as indeed it was. Although Cleveland 
was defeated on the basis of the new issues, he was splen- 
didly vindicated four years later when the people returned 
him and his party to the control of the government. 



A new era — the present era — opened in the history of the 
Republican and Democratic parties about 1896 or 1900.) 
Prior to that time neither party had shown any primary 
concern for the welfare of the wage-earners or the farmers 



278 NEW VIEWPOINTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

or the small business men. Neither party had advocated 
policies that were designed, first and foremost, to better the 
conditions of those ordinary men and women who compose 
the great bulk of the people. Party politics had been largely 
shaped by the tugs and pressures of the transforming eco- 
nomic life of the nation. ^Tn the encouragement of the 
investment of capital," so William Howard Taft tells us, 
*'we nearly transferred complete political power to those who 
controlled cprporate wealth, and we were in danger of a 
plutocracy." / While these influences were chiefly felt by the 
party which was in almost continuous control during the 
period, the Democratic party by no means escaped them. 
Both parties ordinarily acted on the assumption that the 
welfare of the toiling masses would automatically follow 
from the prosperity of the manufacturers and financiers. 

Although old party leaders constantly minimized the 
amount of economic distress and social discontent caused by 
the rapid industrial development, the less fortunate classes 
had sought, from time to time, to voice their protests through 
special parties organized for the purpose. These parties 
were invariably unpromising and short-lived until in 1892 
when an upheaval of angry farmers created the People's 
party and polled more than one million votes in the presiden- 
tial election, a greater number than the difference between 
the total votes of the Democratic and Republican candidates. 
The Populists declared in their platform that they were not 
to be deceived by "the struggles of the two great political 
parties for power and plunder" during the last quarter- 
century nor by their more recent ''uproar of a sham battle 
over the tariff" ; and they proclaimed that the well-being of 
the "plain people" was bottomed upon the adoption of the 
free and unlimited coinage of silver at the ratio of sixteen 
to one. 

Now, "free silver" is a problem of higher economics whose 



THE RIDDLE OF THE PARTIES 279 

implications were no better understood in the nineties by the 
verbose controversialists of either side than they are by the 
average person today. Certainly the issue represented no 
reasoned conviction on the part of the untutored "plain 
people" who saw in it their great hope of economic redemp- 
tion. For them it signified something infinitely more : it was 
a symbol, a Merlin's wand, with which to destroy the 
iniquitous power of "Wall Street" and "Big Business" in 
the national government. Thus, "free silver," however ill- 
conceived the issue may have been, represented the first 
stentorian demand for a consideration of homely and purely 
human interests in national politics. 

Since the injection of this disturbing spirit into the politi- 
cal arena, party politics in this country has undergone a 
profound change. Fearful of the vote-getting strength of 
the new issue, the Democratic party under the leadership of 
William Jennings Bryan declared for "free silver" in their 
platform of 1896, although Cleveland and many other eastern 
Democrats temporarily left the party rather than lend their 
countenance to the doctrine. A mighty campaign followed ; 
and by the election of McKinley the issue in its temporary 
and exigent form was forever discredited. But its living 
spirit had found a lodging place in the national councils of 
both parties. 

By Bryan the new impulses were transmuted and extended 
and enriched until they embraced all varieties of reforms 
that tended to a broader recognition of human rights in 
government. The Republican organization yielded more 
slowly to the new influences ; but by the accident of McKin- 
ley 's death in 1901, a man came into the presidency whose 
instincts responded strongly to the need of ameliorating the 
conditions of the masses and who popularized the new 
gospel. Under the inspiration of Bryan and Roosevelt, a 
group of young leaders sprang up in each party, demanding 



28o NEW VIEWPOINTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

the destruction of "Special Privilege" and a larger participa- 
tion by the people in the control of government. These new- 
tendencies v^ere bitterly resisted by the older leadership. 
Cleveland and his friends denounced the "Bryanization" of 
the Democratic party. *'Standpat" Republicans sneered at 
the "philosophy of failure" and fought the progressive ten- 
dencies at every turn. Both parties were plunged into de- 
structive factional warfare, the progressive wings battling 
with the conservative elements for the direction of party 
policy, although the force of tradition has usually been 
strong enough to enable the party organization to maintain 
a united front on election day. These internal differences 
constitute the most striking characteristics of party politics 
today, and furnish the chief element of confusion in any 
attempt to arrive at the significance of the old parties..^ 

The division between the progressives and conservatives 
within each party may be likened to a seesaw, one end 
being up at one time and the other at another ; and when one 
end of the Republican seesaw is high, a train of influences is 
set in motion w^hich usually causes the opposite end of the 
Democratic seesaw to rise, and vice versa. A hasty review 
of past elections w411 demonstrate the truth of this statement. 
In 1900 the conservative McKinley on the Republican ticket 
opposed the progressive Democratic candidate Bryan. In 
1904 the progressive Republican Roosevelt was nominated 
against the conservative Democrat Parker. The conserva- 
tive Republican Taft battled in 1908 with the progressive 
Bryan. Four years later the internecine quarrel in the 
Republican party reached the breaking-point, and the two 
factions were no longer willing to Hve under the same roof. 
The regular organization renominated their conservative 
standard-bearer Taft ; and the bolting elements, adopting the 
name "Progressive party" and supported by sympathizers 
from outside the party, offered as their candidate the veteran 



THE RIDDLE OF THE PARTIES 281 

progressive, Roosevelt. The Democrats nominated Woodrow 
Wilson, who described himself as a "pi'ogressive with the 
brakes on." Since Taft ran a bad third, it appeared for the 
moment that the progressive spirit had completed its conquest 
of the old parties. Four years later, however, the old fer- 
ment was at work again, with Wilson as the progressive 
Democratic candidate and Hughes supported by the conserva- 
tive Republicans. In 1920 the voters were once more pre- 
sented with the choice between a conservative Republican and 
g. Democrat of progressive antecedents. 
\ For the conscientious voter the situation has thus become 
sadly complicated, inasmuch as the progressive wings of the 
opposing parties have more points of similarity than the 
opposite wings of the same party. This baffling situation 
has tended to wear down old-time party distinctions and has 
made it easy for a Roosevelt Republican to become a Wilson 
Democrat or for a Cleveland Democrat to become a Taft 
Republican. The growth of the independent vote has been 
a significant development of recent campaigns. In a more 
important sense, this situation has served to impair the 
effectiveness of the old parties as agencies of the popular 
will. Many of the outstanding legislative measures of the 
contemporary era have been the product not of concerted 
party action but of temporary combinations of like-thinking 
groups of opposite parties in Congress. Such laws as the 
following cannot, with any degree of accuracy, be labeled 
''Republican" or "Democratic": the federal income tax 
amendment, popular election of senators, federal restriction 
of child labor, the literacy test for immigrants, conservation 
of natural resources, national prohibition, and the federal 
grant of woman suffrage. Although almost any of these 
measures might have furnished material for clearcut party 
cleavage, most of them were the product of the progressive 
members of the two parties acting in conjunction. 



282 NEW VIEWPOINTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

Is there, then, no residue of principles, policies or sym- 
pathies which belongs distinctively to the one party rather 
than to the other? A further examination of the record of 
the parties in recent years may shed some light upon this 
point. We used to be told that the Republicans stood for a 
broadly national policy based upon a liberal construction of 
the Constitution, whereas the Democrats were strict con- 
structionists desiring to enhance the power of the states at 
the expense of the national government; but, as has been 
shown elsewhere in this volume, this distinction has broken 
down in practice.^ 

In the absence of fundamental constitutional differences, 
let us turn to a consideration of what are usually considered 
as party measures. In an effort to solve the trust question, 
the Democrats enacted the Federal Trade Commission Act 
of 1914. The basic principle of the law had, however, been 
urged upon Congress for adoption by President Roosevelt 
again and again, and the Republican platform of 1912 had 
pledged its adoption in case Taft should be reelected. This 
difference between promise and fulfilment cannot rightly be 
laid to congenital party differences or be taken as a criterion 
of RepubHcan bad faith and Democratic performance; but, 
rather, it represented a difference in the relative prepared- 
ness of the public mind for the accomplishment of the 
reform. 

The organization of the federal reserve banking system in 
191 3 was another great law passed by the Democrats 
although the preliminary investigations for this measure had 
been made by a Republican commission during the Taft 
administration. In the details of the plan, a real difference 
of party principle emerged, for the Democrats in enacting 
the law conferred upon the government direct control over 
the banks whereas the Republicans had desired the central 
management to be directed by the banks themselves. 

1 See pp. 235-242. 



THE RIDDLE OF THE PARTIES 283 

' The tariff is another question that has stirred both parties 
to legislative expression in recent years. The results present 
an interesting contrast between the theory and the practice of 
the Democrats in this matter. Measured by actual perform- 
ance, the Democrats do not stand for a tariff for revenue 
only but merely for a less degree of protection than do their 
opponents. Both parties are agreed upon the desirability of 
an expert tariff commission as an aid in tariff legislation. 

In the matter of labor legislation, a difference between the 
parties is to be found, vjhe Democratic party has been 
more inclined to lend an ear to the demands of the working- 
men than has been the RepublicanJ Without going into 
detail, the best evidence of this is to be found in the fact that 
since 1908, when the practice originated, the officers of the 
American Federation of Labor have given their endorsement 
to the Democratic national ticket. 

In foreign affairs the attitude of the parties is more diffi- 
cult to define even though questions of foreign relations have 
bulked large in some recent campaigns. (In 1900 the Repub- 
licans stood squarely for the acquisition of insular depen- 
dencies in distant parts of the globe, whereas the Democrats 
denounced Republican "imperialism" and protested against 
the United States becoming involved in "so-called world 
politics, including the diplomacy of Europe and the intrigue 
and land grabbing of Asia." But by the time of the cam- 
paign of 1916 the Democrats were fully alive to the necessity 
of "so-called world politics/^ in their own meaning of the 
term, and they endorsed President Wilson's proposal of a 
league of nations. Four years later they gave their support 
to the Covenant framed at the Paris Peace Conference; 
whereas the Republicans, divided in opinion among those 
who favored the Covenant, those who wanted a different 
covenant and those who wanted no league at all, framed a 
platform which contained crumbs of comfort for all three 
groups. The fact is that the league issue, which had one of 



284 NEW VIEWPOINTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

its strongest supporters in ex- President Taft, was ill adapted 
to partisan uses. \A careful review of the diplomatic prac- 
tice of the two parties would show, I think, that, in general, 
Republican foreign policy has been firmer, being more con- 
scious of the needs of our overseas trade and tending to 
become aggressive ^.whereas the international policy of the 
Democrats has been postulated on more idealistic grounds 
and has tended to be less practical in its results. 

From such evidence as the foregoing, it is fair to conclude 
that there is today no basic disagreement between the old 
parties as to theory of government; nor does either party 
take issue with the existing economic organization of society. 
The difference between the parties is largely one of point of 
view, partly one of temperament. Both parties are oppor- 
tunistic in their statesmanship, waiting for issues to arise 
and cry for attention before formulating a definite policy for 
dealing with them/ "But, as the foregoing examples suggest, 
the Republicans approach public problems with the predis- 
positions of the successful financier and large business man, 
while the Democrats incline to consider public questions 
from the standpoint of the small business man and of the 
laboring man who is on the make?) As a result the Repub- 
licans tend to cling to the concrete benefits and positive 
achievements of the past, whereas the Democrats are likely 
to respond more quickly to demands for social and economic 
reform through changes in the laws. 

VI 

This discussion has, for the most part, proceeded on the 
assumption that there are only two parties in American 
politics ; and so far as the vast majority of the voters is con- 
cerned, the assumption is entirely valid since, save on two 
occasions, no third party has ever cast more than a negligible 
percentage of the total popular vote. Nevertheless, minor 



THE RIDDLE OF THE PARTIES 285 

parties cannot be ignored since some unforeseen develop- 
ment might conceivably convert one of them into a major 
party, just as back in the fifties the Republican party 
crowded the Whig party out of existence. 

Minor parties, in our modern sense, began to make their 
appearance with the election of 1872. They were the 
inevitable accompaniments of the maladjustments of society 
occasioned by the great economic revolution following the 
Civil War. The aggrieved classes regarded the old parties 
as defenders of the new capitalistic order, and they saw 
relief only in the establishment of their own political parties. 
The wage-earners of the cities were especially active in such 
movements although some of the most promising parties 
were launched by the western farmers. In rapid succession 
candidates were nominated and platforms adopted by such 
parties as the Labor Reformers, the Greenbackers, the 
United Laborites, the Union Laborites and the Populists; 
their platforms demanded such reforms as fiat money, the 
eight-hour day, prohibition of Chinese immigration, govern- 
ment control of railroads and corporations, the taxation of 
swollen incomes, and "free silver." All these parties suf- 
fered for lack of experienced political leadership and their 
inability to secure the funds necessary to sustain a continuous 
party organization. 

In 1892 the ranks of the minor parties were enlarged by a 
political organization of a new type: the Socialist Labor 
party. This party and its subsequent embodiments have 
denounced the efforts of other minor parties to secure social 
amelioration as mere palliatives, and have offered instead a 
comprehensive program for the complete reorganization of 
society and government. Politically the chief asset of the 
Socialists has been the fact that they have visualized for the 
voter the ultimate goal toward which their philosophy tends. 
In a practical sense they have benefited from the fact that 



286 NEW VIEWPOINTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

they have never been in power in the nation, and therefore 
their platform professions are unsullied by the mistakes, 
compromises and ineptitudes of a party that is responsible 
for the everyday conduct of the government. The Socialist 
vote exceeded nine hundred thousand in 19 12 and again in 
1920 but has not as yet won a single electoral vote. The 
Prohibition party founded in 1872, the Socialist Labor party 
established in 1892, and the American Socialist party organ- 
ized in 1 90 1 have enjoyed the longest continuous existence of 
any of the minor parties now in politics. 

Despite the inferior vote-getting power of minor parties, 
they have undoubtedly performed a vital function in our 
political development. They have sometimes proved the 
means by which important new issues have been forced upon 
the reluctant attention of the old parties. This was the case 
in 1896 when the Democrats took over the great Populist 
issue of "free silver," and again in President Wilson's first 
administration when the Democrats undermined the strength 
of the Progressives by enacting most of their ideas into laws. 
Such pressure, however, is effective only when the strength 
of the third party has reached threatening proportions. In a 
more general way, minor parties have served a useful educa- 
tional purpose in directing the attention of the people to great 
problems as yet unthought of and accustoming them to the 
consideration of novel ideas of public policy. 

It is possible, however, that minor parties have played 
their most important role as a safeguard to the peaceful and 
orderly development of American society. Under our sys- 
tem of government any group of malcontents have the right 
to hold a convention, launch a new party in a fever heat of 
excitement and enthusiasm, and give full release to their re- 
pressed emotions in a glowing statement of their grievances. 
Where there is no occasion for secret conspiracy and under- 
ground plotting, minor parties become the safety-valve of 
social discontent. 



THE RIDDLE OF THE PARTIES 287 

The continual formation of new parties argues, on the 
whole, a healthful condition of the public mind. The eternal 
striving for improvement, the "divine discontent" of the 
poet, is the source of life in a progressive nation. 

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 

Every important party in American history has had one or more 
eulogistic historians; but efforts at impartial characterization and 
description have been comparatively few. The new school of politi- 
cal scientists, represented by such men as James Bryce, M. Ostro- 
gorski, Charles A. Beard, Henry Jones Ford, Frank J. Goodnow, A. 
Lawrence Lowell, Jesse Macy, Woodrow Wilson, James A. Wood- 
burn and P. Orman Ray, have devoted careful study to the structure 
and functions of parties. But the historical significance of parties 
has not as yet received adequate treatment although illuminating 
brief discussions may occasionally be found in the general histories 
of the United States, in historical monographs and in treatises on 
American government. The discussion of James Bryce in The 
American Commonwealth (2 v.; New York, 1888, and many later 
editions), vol. ii, chaps, liii-lvi, is almost classic; and the summaries 
in Charles A. Beard's American Government and Politics (New 
York, 1910, and later editions), pp. 103-125, and Jesse Macy's 
Political Parties in the United States, 1846-1861 (New York, 1900), 
chap, iii, are of much value. Third Party Movements Since the Ciznl 
War (Iowa City, 1916) by Fred E. Haynes is the only book on that 
subject, and it should be supplemented by Morris Hillquit's History 
of Socialism in the United States (New York, i903)« 



INDEX 



Adams, Abigail, lacks early edu- 
cational advantages, 130; on 
rebellion of women, 131-132. 

Adams, Henry, on effects of 
economic revolution, 250; as 
author, 102, 

Adams, John, as Harvard stu- 
dent, 73; on proportion of 
colonists opposed to indepen- 
dence, 161 ; explains term : 
American Revolution, 161-162; 
on religious cause for Revo- 
lution, 169; in First Continen- 
tal Congress, 36; is compli- 
mented by horse-jockey, 178; 
on influences behind Federal 
Convention, 192; opposes man- 
hood suffrage, 87; as author, 
Id. 

Adams, John Quincy, presiden- 
tial levees of, 88. 

Adams, Samuel, as political or- 
ganizer, 172-173, 176. 

Agricultural revolution. See 
Economic revolution ; Farm- 
ers' movements. 

Aliens. See Immigration; Na- 
tivism. 

Altschul, Charles, as author, 181. 

Alvord, Qarence W., as author, 
70, 183. 

American Revolution, defined, 
161-162, 179; misrepresented 
in text-books, 160; geographic 
factors in, 25, 37; influence of 
non-English frontier in, 6, 76; 
religious influences in, 169- 
170; divisions among colonists, 
161, 180-181 ; British back- 



ground of, 162-164; American 
setting of, 165-168; attitude of 
sections toward, 168-169, 176- 
177, 178; Grenville acts and 
colonial opposition, 170-172; 
Townshend acts and colonial 
opposition, 172-173; troubles 
with East India Company, 173- 
174; significance of Boston 
Tea Party, 174-175 ; acts of 
1774. 175 ; First Continental 
Congress and results, 175-178; 
issue of independence, 178-179; 
not a contest over abstract 
rights, 179; the patriot-agita- 
tors, 114; loyalists of, 76-77, 
180-181 ; role of women in, 
130-131 ; bibliographical note, 
181-183. See also War for 
Independence. 

Ames, Herman V., as author, 
244. 

Andrews, Charles M., on Eng- 
lish colonization, 51; as eco- 
nomic historian, 71 ; signifi- 
cance in historiography of 
colonial period, 181 ; as author, 
181, 182. 

Anthony, Susan B., wishes to 
learn long division, 135 ; agi- 
tates for immediate emanci- 
pation, 145 ; wants no cessation 
of suffrage agitation during 
Civil War, 146; author of 
nineteenth amendment, 154; on 
oligarchy of sex, 98; as au- 
thor, 159. 

Aristocracy, defined, 72; signifi- 
cance in American history, 72- 



289 



290 



INDEX 



TZ, 99-100; in colonial life, 73- 
75 ; denounced by Declaration 
of Independence 77-78; status 
in Confederation Period, 79- 
80; as exemplified by Consti- 
tution, 80-81 ; as Federalist 
ideal, 56; during Washington's 
presidency, 82-83 ; as modified 
by Jeffersonian Republicans, 
84-86 ; as modified by Jackson- 
ian Democracy, 88-89; as af- 
fected by slavery, 90-91, 92; as 
affected by early industrialism, 
91-92; as affected by Civil 
War, 93; in period since Civil 
War, 94-99 ; bibliographical 
note, 100-102, See also Democ- 
racy; Jacksonian Democracy. 
Articles of Confederation, a 
feeble instrument, 184-185; as 
a state rights document, 221 ; 
efforts to amend, 190-191 ; vio- 
lated ^Jy adoption of Constitu- 
tion, 194-195. See also Con- 
federation period, 

Baer, George F,, on mission of 
wealthy class, 96-97. 

Barnes, Harry E,, on beginning 
of modern times, 245. 

Bassett, John S., on North Caro- 
lina loyalists, i68n, ; as author, 
182, 219. 

Beard, Charles A., significance 
in American historiography, 
71 ; his researches in eco- 
nomics of Constitution, 192; 
as author, 71, 158, 198, 199, 
264, 265, 287, 

Becker, Carl L,, as author, 182. 

Beecher, Henry Ward, on men- 
ace of organized money, 250, 

Beer, George Louis, as economic 
historian, 71; as author, 181- 
182. 

Blaine, James G., reason for 
defeat in 1884, 16-17; his 
nomination opposed by Roose- 
velt, 276; standing as states- 
man, 251, 273-274. 



Brigham, Albert P., as author, 
45. 

British commercial system, ef- 
fect on colonies, 53-54. 

Bruce, H. Addington, as author, 
158. 

Bryan, William Jennings, as 
political leader, 279; as presi- 
dential candidate, 280, 

Bryce, James, as author, 100, 
287. 

Buckle, Henry Thomas, as au- 
thor, 44-45. 



Calhoun, Arthur W., as au- 
thor, loi, 159, 264. 

Calhoun, John C, as southern 
statesman, 65 ; changes con- 
stitutional views, 237-238; as 
author, loi, 228. 

Channing, Edward, as author, 
183. 

Chase, Salmon P., on presiden- 
tial levees, 88, 

Civil War, geographic influences 
on, 41-42; economic causes of, 
67-68; economic factors in, 68; 
foreign-born soldiers in, 12- 
13; women in, 142-145; effect 
on southern aristocracy, 93 ; 
effect on political radicalism, 
1 19-120; effect on parties, 271- 
272, 275; as close of Middle 
Period, 246. 

Clay, Henry, as representative 
of West, 63, 202; seeks to 
unite Northwest and North- 
east, 41-42, 64. 

Cleveland, Frederick A., as au- 
thor, lOI. 

Cleveland, Grover, as reformer, 
251 ; as violator of state 
rights, 240 ; as party leader, 
277; on Democratic opportu- 
nism, 277; hostile to Bryan, 
279, 280. 

Colonial period, as part of an- 
cient American history, 245- 
246; geographic influences af- 



INDEX 



291 



fecting, 24-25, 31-32, 33-37; 
economic influences affecting, 
50-54; colonizing motives of 
English, 3-4, 51; cosmopolitan 
population, 3, 5-6; lays cul- 
tural foundations, 2-3 ; selec- 
tive effects of colonization, 
109; aristocratic character of 
life in, 73-75 ; position of 
women in, 127-131 ; literature 
on, 1 81 -182. 

Colonization. See Colonial 
period. 

Columbus, Christopher, blun- 
ders into America, i ; his voy- 
age as international enterprise, 
2; geographic influences in his 
voyage, .24, 29-30; economic 
reasons for his voyage, 49-50. 

Commons, John R., as author, 
102, 218-219. 

Confederation period, conditions 
during, 79-80, 114, 184-188, 
188-190. See also Articles of 
Confederation, 

Conservatism, defined, 103-106; 
as relative term, 106-107; 
varying degrees of, 107; allies 
of, 108-109; as affected by 
westward movement, 109; as 
affected by generations of 
American historj', 113- 122; of 
rural population, 255 ; signifi- 
cance in American history, 
122-123; bibliographical note, 
124-125. See also Generations 
of American history; Radical- 
ism. 

Constitution, motives animating 
movement for, 188-189; eco- 
nomic influences in adoption 
of, 54, 189-198; attitude of 
convention toward democracy, 
80-81 ; analysis of, 81, 193- 
194; campaign to ratify, 194- 
198; Hamilton's opinion of, 
26; viewed as experiment, 81- 
82; and state rights, 221-222; 
bibliographical note on eco- 
nomic aspects of, 198-199. 



Cubberley, Ellwood P., on con- 
trast between Lincoln's time 
and present, 247-248; as au- 
thor, 219, 264, 265. 



Decxaration of Independence, 
as charter of democracy, 77; 
quoted, 77-7^; application to 
American conditions^ 78, 131 ; 
produced by new generation, 
114; contemporary reception 
of, 178; as viewed by south- 
erners, 91. 

Democracy (political), as theme 
of American history, 72; in 
colonial period, 74; as ex- 
pressed in Declaration of In- 
dependence, 77-78 ; criticised 
in Federal Convention, 80-81 ; 
aided by immigrants during 
Federalist regime, 7-8; de- 
nounced by Federalists, 84; as 
Republican ideal, 57; during 
Jeffersonian regime, 84-86; 
affected by frontier, 34, 39, 41, 
43, 53, 75-76; movement for 
manhood suffrage, 86-87, 216; 
opposed by Kent and others, 
87; bestowed on male negroes, 
93; agitation for since 1900, 
97; acquired by women, 98; 
as test of radicalism, 105-106; 
literature on, loi. See also 
Aristocracy ; Jacksonian De- 
mocracy. 

Democratic party, origin of, 274; 
economic basis of, 57-58; his- 
tory of, 274-281 ; principles 
under Jackson, 117, 274; de- 
fection of Calhounites, 66; 
dominated by southern lead- 
ers, 66-68, 238, 274-275; con- 
stitutional doctrines of, 238- 
242; effect of Civil War on, 
275-277; and Solid South, 276; 
under Qeveland's leadership, 
277; contrasted with present- 
day Republican party, 269, 281- 
284. 



292 



INDEX 



Diplomacy of the United States. 
See Foreign relations ; Mon- 
roe Doctrine. 

Discovery of America, signifi- 
cance of, I ; geographic influ- 
ences affecting, 24, 29-30; eco- 
nomic influences affecting, 49- 
50; as beginning of modern 
history, 245. 

Douglas, Stephen A., on Repub- 
lican party, 6&', on Dred Scott 
decision, 239. 

Dunning, William A., on Ban- 
croft as historian, 211; as au- 
thor, 265. 

Economic Influences in Ameri- 
can History, contrasted with 
geographic influences, 49 ; in 
discovery and exploration, 49- 
50; in colonization, 3-4, 51- 
52 ; in promoting colonial an- 
tagonisms, 52-53; in British 
imperial policy, ^ 53-545 in 
American Revolution, 54, 165- 
168; in movement for Consti- 
tution, 54, 189-198; in diplo- 
macy, 54-55, 56, 67; in early 
party development, 55-58; in 
politics of Middle Period, 58- 
68; in Civil War, 68; since 
Civil War, 69; bibliographical 
note, 69-71, 182, 198-199. See 
also Economic interpretation 
of history; Economic revolu- 
tion in United States. 

Economic interpretation of his- 
tory, defined, 47; relation to 
Socialism, 47-48; as phrased 
by Madison, 48-49; contrasted 
with geographic interpretation, 
49; applied to American his- 
tory in Marxian sense, 7^-71 ', 
phrase not in Cyclopedia, 71 ; 
admitted Umitations of, 71 ; 
product of an industrial age, 
263. See also Economic in- 
fluences in American history. 

Economic revolution in United 
States, significance of, 246- 



248, 248-249; causes of, 248; 
three aspects of, 249; effect 
on Henry Adams, 250; effect 
on political leadership, 250- 
252 ; effect on parties, 272-273 ; 
transportation aspect of, 252- 
254; agricultural aspect of, 
254-255 ; industrial aspect of, 
255-259; effect on American 
diplomacy, 259-260 ; influence 
on American life and culture, 
261-262; effect on political 
philosophy, 262-263 5 biblio- 
graphical note, 264-265. 

Education in United States, rise 
of CathoHc schools, 10; Ger- 
man influence on, 20; in colo- 
nial period, 74-75 ; beginnings 
of free public, 86; movement 
for free public, 89-90, 205, 208, 
209-210; for women, 130, 135, 
140, 141, 149-150; establish- 
ment of colleges in Jacksonian 
period, 214; present objectives 
of education, 261-262. 

Eliot, Charles W., on colonial 
women, 127. 

Emerson, Ralph Waldo, as femi- 
nist, 140; as exponent of 
Transcendentalism, 212; on 
craze for communities, 214; as 
author, 125, 210, 219. 

Exploration, geographic condi- 
tions of, 30-31 ; economic in- 
fluences affecting, 50-51. 



Fairchild, Henry P., as author, 
21, 22. 

Farmers' movements, geographic 
basis of, 43 ; economic basis 
of, 254; opposed to plutocracy, 
96; Granger movement, 253- 
254 ; Greenback movement, 
255; Populism, 255. See also 
Economic revolution in United 
States. 

Farrand, Max, on immigration, 
19; on nature of Constitution, 
193; as author, 21. 



INDEX 



293 



Federalist party, economic basis 
of, 55-56; constitutional views 
of, 235-237; seeks to confer 
title on president, 82-83; op- 
poses aliens, 7-8; reasons for 
unpopularity of, 83; alarmed 
by Republican success, 84. 

Fisher, Sydney G., on atternpts 
to misrepresent Revolution, 
161 ; as author, 159, 181, 183. 

Foreign relations of United 
States, geographic influences 
in, 25-28, 40-41 ; economic in- 
fluences on, 54-55, 56, ^\ ef- 
fect of economic revolution 
on, 259-260; attitude of major 
parties toward, 283-284. See 
also Monroe Doctrine. 

Foster, John W., on American 
foreign policy, 27-28. 

Fox, Dixon Ryan, as author, 46, 

lOI. 

Franklin, Benjamin, opposes 
German immigration, 5. 

Freeman, Edward A., on use 
of word "federal," 234; as au- 
thor, ICG. 

Frontier in American history, 
significance of, 2, 34, 37, 109; 
colonial ^ frontiers, 33-34, 52- 
53 ; during American Revolu- 
tion, 25-26, 37, 167-168, 176; 
during Confederation period, 
185 ; attitude toward ratifica- 
tion of Constitution, 195-196; 
in the Middle West, 8-9, 38- 
42, 58-60, 201-203; in the 
trans-Mississippi West, 42-44; 
role of women pioneers, 132- 
133; disappearance of, 42, 43- 
44, 253; literature on, 45. 

Galloway, Joseph, on sectarian 
influences in Revolution, 170; 
from patriot to Tory, 180; on 
racial make-up of patriot 
army, 7. 

Generations of American his- 
tory, Jefferson on, 113; signifi- 
cance of, 122-124; first gen- 



eration, 114-115; second gen- 
eration, 1 1 5- 1 16; third genera- 
tion, 116-117; fourth genera- 
tion, 117; fifth generation, 117- 
120; sixth generation, 120- 
121 ; seventh generation, 121- 
122; beginning of eighth gen- 
eration, 122. 
Geographic influences in Ameri- 
can history, defined, 23, 49; 
two main aspects, 23; in dis- 
covery and exploration, 24, 29- 
31 ; in colonial period, 24-25, 
31-32, 33-37', in French and 
Indian War, 32-33; in revo- 
lutionary era, 25-26, 37, 165- 
168; in ratification of Consti- 
tution, 195-196; in foreign re- 
lations, 26-29; passing of iso- 
lation, 28-29; in development 
of Middle West, 38-41 ; as 
cause of sectional antagonism, 
41-42; since Civil War, 42-44; 
bibliographical note, 44-46. 



Hamilton, Alexander, an im- 
migrant, 8; writes resolution 
calling Federal Convention, 
191 ; on opposition to ratifica- 
tion, 197; opinion of Consti- 
tution, 26, 81 ; on best form 
of government, 80; finan- 
cial plan of, 55-56; approves 
of child labor in factories, 
134; reason for fighting duel, 
84. 

Harper, William, on Declaration 
of Independence, 91 ; on slav- 
ery, 92-93. 

Harriman, E. H., on modern 
pioneer spirit, 96. 

Hart, Albert Bushnell, as au- 
thor, 71, 102, 125, 219. 

Henderson, Archibald, as author, 
70. 

Hockett, Homer C, as author, 
70, 199. 

Hoover, Herbert, as presidential 
possibility in 1920, 268. 



294 



INDEX 



Hulbert, Archer B., as author, 
45, 46. 

Hutchinson, Anne, mother of 
fifteen children, 128; banished 
and murdered, 128-129. 

Hutchinson, Thomas, on Stamp 
Act riot, 75 ; and tea troubles, 
174; on Samuel Adams, 173- 
174; on proportion of colo- 
nists favoring independence, 
161 ; as loyaHst, 76. 

Immigration, significance in 
American history, 2; racial 
make-up of Columbus's crew, 
2; mixed character of English 
colonists, 3 ; reasons for colo- 
nial immigration, 3-4; propor- 
tion of foreign-born in colo- 
nies, 5 ; influence and numbers 
of English, Scotch Irish and 
Germans in colonies, 5-6, 36- 
Z7\ non-English groups and 
American Revolution, h-y, y6, 
167, 169; democratizing influ- 
ence during Federalist regime, 
7-8; rapid increase from 1820 
to i860, 8; influence of Ger- 
man immigrants from 1830 to 
i860, 8-9; influence of Irish 
from 1830 to i860, 9-10; entry 
of political corruption, 10; 
Know Nothing movement, 10- 
11; avoids South, 11-12; as 
influence for Union and 
against slavery, 12; immi- 
grants in Union army, 12-13; 
enters new phase after Civil 
War, 13-14; Oriental immigra- 
tion, 13-14; characteristics and 
influence of new immigration 
from Europe, 14-18, 260; re- 
strictive legislation, 18-19; 
racial contributions to Ameri- 
can culture and ideals, 19-20; 
as reason for world leadership 
of United States, 20-21 ; 
Americanized by frontier, 44; 
bibliographical note, 21-22. 
See also Nativism. 



Industrial _ revolution. See 
Economic revolution in United 
States ; Manufacturing. 

Isolation. See Foreign relations 
of United States ; Geographic 
influences in American his- 
tory. 



Jackson, Andrew, as repre- 
sentative of West, 6z, 202; 
causes of election to presi- 
dency, 65, 88, 209; as product 
of new democratic spirit, 200- 
201, 218; as party leader, 274; 
achievements and ideals of his 
administration, 65-66, 217-218; 
one of greatest presidents, 124. 
See also Jacksonian Democ- 
racy. • 

Jacksonian Democracy, defined, 
200-201 ; western influences in, 
201-203 ; relation of labor 
movement to, 203-210; intel- 
lectual and religious influences 
in, 210-215 ; political phases of, 
117, 216-218; bibliographical 
note, 218-219. 

Jeff^erson, Thomas, on debts of 
planters, 166-167; on democ- 
racy, 100; on division of man- 
kind into schools of opinion, 
104; on merits of optimism, 
106; on short-time legislation, 
113; on political situation in 
1790, 81-82; political bargain 
with Hamilton, 56; organizes 
Republican party, ^z, 274; 
writes Kentucky Resolutions, 
223 ; constitutional views of, 
235-236; principles of his ad- 
ministration, 84-86; on pur- 
chase of Louisiana, 236. 

Johnston, Alexander, on state 
sovereignty, 222; as author, 
243, 244. 



Kent, James, on manhood suf- 
frage, B>7. 



INDEX 



295 



Labor Movement in United 
States, before Civil War, 86, 
133-134, 206-210; after Civil 
War, 257-259; opposed to plu- 
tocracy, 96; as menace to privi- 
lege, 97-98; as affected by irn- 
migration, 14-15, 18; in poli- 
tics, 283, 285-286; entry of 
women into factories, 133, 148- 

149. . , . 

Literature, American, durmg 
Jacksonian period, 210-21 1; at 
the present time, 262; cause 
for popularity of short story, 
261. 

Lecky, William E. H., as author, 
183. 

Libby, Orin G., as author, 46, 

199. 

Lincoln, Abraham, favors 
woman suffrage, 140; attacks 
Supreme Court, 271 ; effect of 
election on South, 93, 271 ; 
praises war work of women, 
144; one of greatest presidents, 
124; contrast between his time 
and today, 247-248. 

Lodge, Henry Cabot, on Hamil- 
ton's financial plan, 56; on 
reason for Hamilton's duel, 84. 

Lowell, James Russell, on 
Protestantism, 212; on unrest 
of Jacksonian period, 214-215; 
as author, 210. 

Lybyer, A. H., on discovery of 
America, 49-50. 

McLaughlin, Andrew C, as 
author, 71, loi, 125, 199. _ 

McMaster, John Bach, signifi- 
cance of writings of, 69; as 
author, 21-22, loi, 102, 199. 

Madison, James, on economic 
group conflicts, 48-49, 69; 
writes Virginia resolutions, 
223 ; organizes Republican 
party, 83 ; opposes extension 
of suffrage, 87. 

Manufacturing, development prior 
to Civil War, 60, 203-204, 247 ; 



development after Civil War, 
255-259; women workers in, 
133, 148-149. See also Eco- 
nomic revolution in United 
States. 

Marshall, John, marries sixteen- 
year-old girl, 128; on motives 
for ratification of Constitu- 
tion, 197; opposes extension 
of suffrage, 87 ; as author, 199. 

Martineau, Harriet, on social 
distinctions in America, 92; 
as author, 100. 

Mencken, H. L., on racial in- 
fluences in American culture, 
19, 20; on drama of American 
life, 261. 

Merriam, Charles Edward, as 
author, loi, 219, 243, 265. 

Modern times in United States, 
defined, 246. See also Recent 
history of United States. 

Monroe Doctrine, geographic 
causes of, 2y ; effect of eco- 
nomic revolution on develop- 
ment of, 260. 

Morris, Gouverneur, on the 
mob, 76; on popular govern- 
ment, 80. 

Moses, Bernard, as author, loi. 

Music in United States, develop- 
ment since Civil War, 263. 

Nativism, in colonial times, 5; 
as expressed by Federalists, 7; 
Know Nothing movement, 10- 
11; since Civil War, 18-19. 
See also Immigration. 

Nullification, doctrine of, rela- 
tion to state rights theory, 
220; announced by Kentucky, 
223 ; by South Carolina, 228- 
229; rejected by other south- 
ern states, 229-230; superseded 
by secession, 232. See also 
Secession, doctrine of; State 
rights theory. 

Ogg, Frederic Austin, on Mon- 
roe Doctrine, 260; as author, 
265. 



296 



INDEX 



Orth, Samuel P., as author, 21. 
Osgood, Herbert L., significance 

in historiography of colonial 

period, 181. 

pAxsoN, Frederic L., as author, 

70, 265. 
Payne, Edward John, as author, 

45. 

Penn, William, as promoter of 
immigration, 4. 

Plutocracy, defined, 94-95 J agi- 
tation against, 96-98; Taft on, 
278. 

PoHtical parties in United States, 
their meaning not clear to 
voters, 266-268; ways of test- 
ing, 268-270; function of plat- 
forms, 268; their nature prior 
to 1896, 277-278; their nature 
since 1896, 278-281 ; analysis 
of principles of, 282-284; 
minor parties, 285-287; biblio- 
graphical note, 287. See also 
Democratic party ; Federalist 
party; Republican party, first; 
Republican party, second ; So- 
cialism; Whig party. 

Populism, 255, 278-279. 

Radicalism, defined, 103-106; as 
relative term, 106-107; vary- 
ing degrees of, 107; as viewed 
in retrospect, 108; allies of, 
108-109; reasons for spread 
in America, 109; accelerated 
by immigration, 17-18, 109; 
moderated by easy land owner- 
ship, 109-110; as affected by 
generations of American his- 
tory, 1 13- 122; of rural popu- 
lation, 255 ; significance in 
American history, 122-123; 
bibliographical note, 124-125, 
See also Conservatism ; Gen- 
erations of American history; 
Reform. 

Railroads, built by Irish, 9; geo- 
graphic influence of, 42; rapid 
growth after Civil War, 252- 



253 ; government regulation of, 
253-254. See also Economic 
revolution in United States. 

Ramsdell, Joseph E., on central- 
izing trend of government, 
234-235; on Federal Reserve 
Act and Adamson Law, 241- 
242. 

Randolph, John, opposes exten- 
sion of suffrage, 87; on Whig 
principles, 269-270. 

Recent American history, be- 
ginning of, 246; significance of 
economic revolution in, 246- 
250; development of trans- 
portation and its influence on, 
252-254 ; agricultural growth 
and its_ influence on, 254-255 ; 
industrial expansion and its 
influence on, 259-260; geo- 
graphic influences in, 42-44; 
economic influences in, 69; 
immigration in, 13-21 ; politi- 
cal leadership in, 120-122, 
250-251 ; party development in, 
239-242, 272-274, 275-287 ; 
diplomatic interests of, 259- 
260; nationalizing tendencies 
in, 234-235; activities of 
women in, 148-158; demo- 
cratic and aristocratic aspects 
of, 93-100; life and manners 
in, 261-263. See also Eco- 
nomic revolution in United 
States. 

Reform, three stages of, iio- 
112; examples of, in Ameri- 
can history, 112-113, 213; 
supported by women, 151-152; 
spirit as analyzed by Lowell, 
215 ; modern political expo- 
nents of, 250-251. 

Rehgious influences in Ameri- 
can history, in colonization, 3 ; 
in colonial life, 75; in Ameri- 
can Revolution, 167, 169-170; 
separation of church and state, 
83; as factor in Jacksonian 
Democracy, 211-213; as factor 
in Know Nothing movement, 



INDEX 



297 



10; in Republican party, 271; 
in campaign of 1884, 17; as 
modified by economic revolu- 
tion, 263. 

Republican party, first, economic 
basis of, 56-57; opposed to 
aristocracy, 83, 274; attitude 
toward democracy, 84-85 ; con- 
duct in office, 115-116; consti- 
tutional doctrines of, 235-236; 
forerunner of Democratic 
party, 274. See also Demo- 
cratic party. 

Republican party, second, origin 
of in 1854, 68, 119, 142, 270; 
economic basis of, 57; consti- 
tutional views of, 240-242 ; his- 
tory of, 270-274, 277-281 ; 
character of, before 1865, 270- 
272; conservative reaction of, 
272-274; contrasted with pres- 
ent-day Democratic party, 
269, 281-284. 

Rhodes, James Ford, on per- 
sonal liberty laws, 231. 

Roosevelt, Theodore, on reform 
movements, iio-iii; opposes 
Blaine's nomination, 276; as 
progressive leader, 279-280; as 
leader in conservation move- 
ment, 253 ; an aggressive na- 
tionalist, 241 ; one of greatest 
presidents, 124. 



Santayana, George, on charac- 
teristics of modern American, 
261. 

Schlesinger, Arthur Meier, as 
author, 182, 265. 

Schools. See Education in 
United States. ^ 

Secession, doctrine of, relation 
to state rights theory, 220; 
New England plot of 1804, 
2^7 ; and Hartford Conven- 
tion, 225 ; as shield against 
federal interference. 230; as 
successor to nullification, 232; 
as expressed by South Caro- 



lina, 232, 233, 234; by Georgia, 
22>Z, 234; put into execution, 
^?)Z, 275 ; repudiated by John- 
son governments, 233-234; re- 
pudiated by Democratic party, 
239. _ See also Nullification, 
doctrine of; State rights 
theory. 

Sectionalism, in revolutionary 
period, 165-169; in Middle 
Period, 58-68. See also Slav- 
ery, 

Semple, Ellen Churchill, as au- 
thor, 45, 46. 

Shaler, Nathaniel S., as author, 
45- 

Silver controversy, as political 
issue, ^ 278-279, 286. See also 
Populism. 

Slavery, geographic basis of, 41 ; 
economic basis of, 61-62; in 
colonial period, 78; keeps im- 
migration from South, 11; 
significance of westward 
spread of, 66 ; as political 
issue, 66-68, 118-119, 270-271, 
274-275 ; as basis of white 
aristocracy, 90-91, 92; agita- 
tion against, 118-119, 136-137, 
141-142, 145-146, 213; abolition 
of, 93, 119; treatment of f reed- 
men, 99, 1 19-120. 

Socialism, and economic deter- 
minism, 47-48, 70-71 ; first 
organized by Germans, 17-18; 
communistic experiments, 214; 
gains recruits among women, 
149; in politics, 264, 285-286; 
as goal of Democratic party, 
269. 

Squire, Belle, as author, 158. 

Stanton, Elizabeth Cady, as au- 
thor, 158, 159. 

State rights theory, term of vari- 
able meaning, 220; relation to 
strict construction, 220-221 ; 
essence of, 221 ; place in 
American history, 222-223, 235, 
243 ; as expressed in Consti- 
tution, 221-222; as viewed by 



298 



INDEX 



Virginia, 223-224, 226, 228, 
229; by Kentucky, 223-224, 
230, 232, 22,3 ; by Massachusetts, 
224, 226, 227, 230-231 ; by 
Connecticut, 224, 225, 227, 231 ; 
by Pennsylvania, 226, 227, 
229; by Ohio, 226, 229, 231, 
232; by South CaroHna, 226, 
228-229, 232, 233, 234; by 
Georgia, 227, 228, 229, 233, 
234; by Alabama, 228, 229; 
by Mississippi, 228, 229, 233; 
by North Carolina, 229; by 
Vermont, 231 ; by New Jersey, 
231 ; by Wisconsin, 231 ; by 
Maine, 232 ; by Maryland, 232 ; 
by Delaware, 232; by Ten- 
nessee, 233; Hartford Con- 
vention as expression of, 225; 
since Civil War, 234-235, 239- 
242; as practised by Jeffer- 
sonian Republicans, 235-236, 
237-238; by Federalists, 236- 
237; by Democrats, 238- 
242; by Republicans, 240-242; 
bibliographical note, 243- 
244. See also Nullification, 
doctrine of; Secession, doc- 
trine of. 

Strong, Josiah, on modern aris- 
tocracy, 94. 

Suffrage. See Democracy (po- 
litical) ; Slavery; Women. 

Sumner, Helen, on Working 
Men's party, 210. 

Taft, William H., on plutoc- 
racy, 278; as presidential can- 
didate, 280. 

Thorpe, Francis Newton, as au- 
thor, lOI. 

Tocqueville, Alexis de, on 
American aristocracy, 88; as 
author, 100. 

Turner, Frederick J., signifi- 
cance in American historiog- 
raphy, 45. 69-70; influence on 
historical scholarship, 70 ; pre- 
sides over conference, 46; as 
author, 45, 70, lOi, 218. 



United States Sanitary Com- 
mission, 142-143. 

Van Buren, Martin, as repre- 
sentative of northern seaboard, 
64; establishes ten-hour day, 
209; as candidate in 1840, 89. 

Van Tyne, Claude H., on selec- 
tive effects of colonization, 
109; as author, 182, 183. 

War of 1812, geographic in- 
fluences in, 26, 39; attitude of 
New England toward, 224-225. 

War for Independence, not the 
American Revolution, 161-162; 
geographic conditions of war- 
fare, 25-26; a victory for state 
rights, 221 ; role of women in, 
132. 

Warne, Frank J., as author, 21. 

Washington, George, in non-im- 
portation movement, 172; pre- 
vents army plot at Newburg, 
185 ; on danger of lawlessness, 
188; approves child labor in 
factories, 134; geographic fac- 
tor in Farewell Address, 26, 
29; one of greatest presidents, 
124. 

Watterson, Henry, on Demo- 
cratic party, 275. 

Webster, Daniel, constitutional 
views of, 237-238; opposes 
manhood suffrage, S7 ; eulo- 
gizes log-cabin, 89. 

Woills, David A., as author, 264. 

West in American history. See 
Frontier in American history. 

West, Willis Mason, as author, 
218. 

Whig party, economic basis of, 

57. 
Wilson, Woodrow, on cause for 
ratification of Constitution, 
197; as presidential candidate, 
281 ; urges federal suffrage 
amendment, 155; as national- 
ist, 241-242; on democratiza- 



INDEX 



299 



tion of industry, 98; on New 
York as Italian city, 15; one 
of greatest presidents, 124; as 
author, 70, 287. 
Women, ignored by history text- 
books, 126; part in coloniza- 
tion, 127; status in colonies, 
128-130; in revolutionary agi- 
tation, 130-131 ; in War for 
Independence, 131-132; as 
western pioneers, 132-133 ; en- 
try into factories, 133, 148- 
149; education of, 130, 135, 
140, 141, 149-150; first woman 
rights movement, 135-140, 
213 ; Seneca Falls convention 
of 1848, 138-139; in anti- 
slavery movement, 136-137. 
141-142, 145-146; legal status 



of, 129-130, 140, 152-153; in 
anti-liquor movement, 141, 
151-152; in Civil War, 142- 
145 ; struggle for universal 
suffrage, 97, 130, 138-139, 146- 
148, 153-155; club movement, 
150-151; in social welfare 
movement, 152; in World 
War, 156-157; outlook for, 
157-158; bibliographical note, 
158-159. 
World War, effect of immigra- 
tion on American attitude to- 
ward, 19-20; geographic con- 
siderations in American atti- 
tude toward, 28-29; part of 
women in, 156-157; causes 
great centralization of federal 
authority, 242. 



1^7 XI- /\ 




V'' 


^o'' 


v/ 


^ ^ 






'' % 


./ 




"./ 


% 




■0^.'°- 


" °« 


s 



■r% 






o 



.^>' 



\^ 



'c^. 



'^. 



\'^^^a^^\^ 



S 



S ^ 



^^-.^N- 
,-S^ ^ 



^^^j 



0^^ 






^^.'; 












>-V 



"^/. -v^ 



^ x-^ 



.^' 






■^' V, 



■^^ <^^' 



.#\'^ 



OO^ 






.0' 



r- 






0^ 



.-^^ 



s?:^ '^^ 



^^A v^^ 



^^ r - %.# 







'■" 




/■ 










^'/ 


% 


^ , "V,/--* 




' if 


-i 


.-•^ 


1^ 


*^ ^ 


%-""-■ 


^^>^ 


■"o 


0^ 








"^ V' 




,^-^ 


'^^ 


ru c«- 






•.^°<, 








^^ 






• VI 








^^. 


"^ a 


, \ 


_>. V « / 


''/- 








■% 


,<^'^-.^^. 

V 


•V ( 



^\■ .r-. 



.\1"" 



-V 



.-Js^ .; 



S^o 



"^ 


o'^ 




•^d 


" ..s*-^ 








v(^>- 



m 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




009 088 225 9 # 



